You and I Could Live Forever
by hmweasley
Summary: Seth had been insistent that Leah acknowledge her feelings for Embry. He'd talked like that would fix everything, but he was wrong. Now Leah only feels confused as she tries to figure out what to do about her feelings without hurting herself or, more importantly, Embry. Sequel to You Can't Hide Forever.
1. January

**A/N: Here's the sequel to A Crappy Little Piece of Forever and You Can't Hide Forever. I would recommend reading both of those stories before this one, but it's not required. Huge thank you to** **Jezebel Jai-Braxlin and FannieForever15, who beta read this chapter and helped make it better than it was before.** **As a recap, Leah has acknowledged her feelings for Embry to herself, but she has yet to do anything about it...**

Chapter 1

 **January 4th, 2009**

"So, what do you think?"

The place was average. That was the first thing I thought upon looking at the house, but I didn't think that answer would satisfy Rachel. Not with the cautious way she was looking at me.

"It looks," I struggled over finding a word, "nice."

Rachel frowned, and I knew I'd failed to hide the lack of enthusiasm I felt.

"It's a house," I continued, feeling the need to justify my lackluster response. "It looks like your average house. It's not a bad house, but it's not a remarkable house either. That's a good thing for your first house, right? You could start off a lot worse, and the less impressive you start off, the easier it'll be for your next one to be an improvement."

Rachel frowned like my words were lost on her. She didn't care how big or impressive her house was. She just wanted one somewhere else. Not one in Forks, Washington, but that was as far as she was getting for now.

The woman in question chewed on her lip as she stared at the house in contemplation. It was a nervous habit she had broken herself from years ago. It only happened when she was stressed, and I'd seen it frequently over the past several months.

"It'll be better when it's decorated," Rachel said, but it was in a near whisper, almost like she was afraid to defend it.

"Really, Rachel. It's not a bad house. I'm just not someone you ask about houses."

I followed her up the front lawn and into the house, carrying two large boxes. The inside, currently filled with nothing but boxes, was perhaps less impressive than the outside had been. I sat my load down and pretended to be more interested in the empty space than I was.

"I don't do enthusiasm," I continued. "If you wanted that, you should have asked Emily to come."

"You don't ask a pregnant woman in her third trimester to come help you move boxes."

She hadn't asked me to help her move boxes. The two I'd carried and the one Rachel had been holding were the entire load. Paul and Rachel had been taking this move slowly, moving odds and ends at infrequent intervals. But few of us had seen the house. This trip made me one of the first. Rachel had some excuse about wanting to unveil it in its "real" state, i.e. when she'd been able to decorate it to the best of her ability.

I knew from her chatter on the drive from La Push to Forks that the furniture was coming in two days, and they finally had the bulk of their belongings in the house. As soon as they had a bed, this would be where Paul and Rachel lived, and Rachel would undertake the decorating process with vigor.

She'd be as far away from La Push as she was capable of getting. It was tempting to place bets on how long she'd last.

Her attempts to defend this place came out of desperation for it to be what she needed, but it wasn't. The house was fine; Forks was fine. But none of it was what Rachel wanted. A decrepit, one-room apartment in any city in the world would have elicited more genuine endearment from Rachel.

Rachel was pulling things out of boxes for the first time. All the kitchen utensils were a bright orange and must have been from Rachel's previous apartment in Seattle. It was hard to say where she'd been keeping this stuff over the past couple of years. I wondered if it had ever come out of these boxes or if Rachel had kept them packed up, just in case.

"I was thinking," she said as she moved around the kitchen, depositing things where she thought they belonged. There was an urgency to it, like the sooner she did this, the sooner this house would feel right for her. "This can go here, and this here."

As I watched her, the sense of worry in my stomach grew stronger.

The moodiness Rachel had been exhibiting recently had disappeared around the time she and Paul announced they were moving into this house. Everyone else had accepted that things were better and moved on to focus on different things. From Joshua Uley depositing a little girl on Sam and Emily's doorstep when they were already expecting another kid to Embry finally having confirmation that Sam was his brother to Jared and Kim's wedding preparations to Jasper and Alice's newly confirmed move rocking Nessie's world again, no one had time to spare for Rachel when she appeared fine.

But I was finding it difficult not to focus on Rachel.

I knew that Paul and I were the only ones who could see it. The intense need Rachel felt to overcompensate with this house, to make it what she needed when it never could be. Paul's way of dealing with it was to put everything he had into this house too because it was the only thing he knew to do for Rachel. He couldn't follow her away like we both knew she wanted. This was all he could give her, and it wasn't helping.

Rachel rambled on about her plans as I stood there in the middle of the barren space that would someday be a living room. The ideas that Rachel was flying through sounded so detailed that I didn't think I should step in to help with any of the arranging she was doing. I was sure to screw it up, and Rachel needed it just right. My only option was to stand there, feeling helpless as Rachel threw herself into a frenzy over everything that needed to be done.

She placed lamps on the floor, remarking that she knew just what table would go underneath them later. She threw pillows down beside them, remarking that she knew they'd look just right on the couch once it got there. There was a clear image in her head that I didn't share. All I could see was a room whose floor was scattered with odds and ends.

It couldn't look like a lived-in house yet, but I had a feeling it would retain some sense of falseness even once Rachel had put everything in its rightful place.

"There," she said, placing a small stack of DVDs next to where she planned for the TV to go. "It'll look great, right?"

I tried to smile, but my face felt like plastic. "I'm sure it will."

If Rachel heard the worry in my voice, she didn't comment on it. Instead, she brushed past me into the kitchen, which was separated from the living room only by a counter that came up to my lower chest. This room was easier to imagine put together now that Rachel had deposited all of her things around it. There were cabinets and a sink, and the fridge had come with the house. Now that Rachel had placed a coffee pot and a toaster along the counter, it could almost appear finished, but Rachel was going on about her future plans for it right down to her decision to try for a new color scheme instead of her previous orange. That would just have to do for now.

I leaned my hip against the counter as I went back to watching, blending into the surroundings. My presence here was useless, but I couldn't leave Rachel. Doing so didn't feel right.

I'd be more worried once the furniture arrived, once she and Paul started living out here. Despite Rachel's assurances to the contrary, I couldn't imagine her stepping foot in La Push unless necessary once she had taken this small step away from it. We'd have to come to her. But Paul would still have to work for much of the day and patrol regularly at other times, and Rachel wouldn't have much of anyone here in Forks to spend time with.

That worried me, but there was also little I could do about it when I had a life of my own. I had school each day and no time to act as an adult's babysitter, even though part of me felt like I should.

Whether it was Forks or La Push, I wasn't sure how much longer Rachel could last.

 **January 11th, 2009**

Nessie Cullen had taken the position of "destroyer of my school vacations" to heart. Sure, I couldn't blame her for Alice and Jasper's decision to up and follow Rosalie and Emmett out of the country. I could blame her for looking so pouty on my last day of break. I could also blame Jake for thinking that bringing her around us was a surefire way of cheering her up.

"Why can't Claire come over?" Nessie asked. She'd been asking it every three hours out of desperation for something to do that wasn't with me or one of the guys. She glanced between Jake and Quil, waiting for one of them to answer.

"She has to spend time at home, Ness." Jake had been worried all day because he wasn't able to cheer up his imprint, and I knew he wanted to give her this one request. He kept throwing Quil desperate looks whenever Nessie brought it up again as if Quil would suddenly decide to go get his own imprint specifically for Nessie.

"Her parents wanted to spend time with her today," Quil repeated for the third time. "You know how important spending time with Bella and Edward is to you?" he said to Nessie. "Claire wants to spend time with her mom and dad too."

Nessie had begrudgingly accepted this each time. I knew the girl didn't want to cause any problems. She was upset and wanted a friend. Understandable, and it wasn't as if most kids her age would be more tolerable than this. Claire was actually worse whenever Nessie couldn't come around.

The two girls were roughly the same in physical development right now, even if Nessie still surpassed Claire in mental development. They were the same height, something that would only be true for a couple more months. Then Nessie would be on her way to surpassing Claire in every way. Their friendship might not last that long in the future, or would at least change in dynamics.

It was going to be weird watching that unfold. Would Nessie become some big sister figure for Claire? Or would she lose interest in the human girl entirely as she continued to age? I had a feeling Claire wouldn't handle the latter option well, and I knew from Quil's thoughts that it was a problem that had begun to plague him.

Nessie went back to her coloring books, pushing down harder than necessary on the red as she colored in Ariel's hair.

I couldn't blame her for being upset. It had been more than a year since Rosalie and Emmett moved away, and in that time, Nessie had only spoken to them over the phone or Skype. There had been no in-person visits during the time that Nessie doubled in size. Jake had been reminded multiple times that time worked differently for immortal vampires, but we all knew that he was pissed that Nessie's aunt and uncle were missing her growing up, especially Rosalie who had been so involved in Nessie's early life.

Now Alice and Jasper had gone off too and were sure to miss just as much in the future. Something that Nessie was aware of as she sulked through the departure. Bella and Edward had struggled to get Nessie to say goodbye to the two vampires, and now Nessie was begging to come to La Push every day as an escape.

Since Embry and I were still on winter break and had nothing better to do, we had spent the last few days with her, but today, Jake and Quil both happened to be off work. The four of us were all sitting around with her at Jake's house. And her sadness was bringing out the moodiness in each of us.

"Do you believe in mermaids?" Nessie asked the room at large. She had moved on to Ariel's tail, using various shades of green in a pattern that most six-year-olds wouldn't be able to manage.

The guys and I looked around at each other, each shrugging. Mermaids weren't something any of us bothered to think about. After several seconds of silence, Nessie looked up from her coloring book to stare at us, expecting an answer. Her gaze landed on Jake, knowing he would be the first to respond to her.

He looked uncomfortable, like he feared his answer would upset Nessie. Although the girl was intelligent enough that it was difficult to believe she would be upset about a lack of mermaids. Sometimes Jake was unable to remember that she wasn't a normal little girl even though he took her on hunting trips so she could feed.

"Not really," he admitted. "I don't know of any evidence for them."

Nessie nodded, satisfied with that answer, and I could hear all three of the guys exhale in relief. I rolled my eyes.

"That's what Daddy said too. He said he'd never heard of real mermaids in all of his century of existence. But then he said that he didn't know the wolves existed either when he was younger, and the ocean is a big place."

One of my eyebrows rose. Imagining Edward Cullen suspending his disbelief in mermaids for the benefit of his daughter was amusing.

"The ocean is a big place," Jake agreed. There was no way he was going to contradict anything that was technically true as long as it gave Nessie hope.

Nessie looked back down at her picture but didn't pick up another crayon.

"If there are mermaids," she continued, "they probably don't look like Ariel. She doesn't even have gills, but apparently, she has lungs. What good are those underwater? What was Disney thinking?"

Embry and I both laughed. I tried to stifle it quickly, but it was hard to contain it at the look on Quil's face. He spent so much time with Claire that he was always particularly struck by some of the things Nessie said that didn't sound like anything that could come out of Claire's mouth. Jake, on the other hand, was far more used to Nessie's comments, and he just looked relieved that he didn't have to deal with an already upset Nessie becoming even more so over mermaids.

"They were probably thinking that gills would make her scary-looking," I commented.

Nessie gave me a skeptical look, one that made me feel stupid. From a two-year-old.

"Why would gills be scary?" she asked. "Fish have them. Fish aren't scary."

I shrugged, struggling to explain it in a way Nessie would understand. I wasn't sure if there was one. This girl didn't feel fear towards anything that would have frightened a normal child.

"But humans don't have them," I said. "And Ariel looks human except her tail. Gills would look out of place on her, and the unusual can be scary for a lot of people."

Nessie's skepticism hadn't faded. If anything, it was stronger.

"By that logic, her tail should be scary, but it's not. And I don't think other people find it scary either."

I sighed. She wasn't going to understand.

"I think it's faces," Embry said. I had to keep myself from exhaling in relief that I'd been taken me off the spot. I didn't relish being shown up by a toddler. "Faces having features that aren't human is what's scary. People don't get as worked up about a mermaid having a tail instead of legs as long as her face looks human. It's what connects us the most. You read people from their face more than anything."

Nessie took a moment to ponder this. Her eyes cast downward at her half-finished picture, taking in all of Ariel's features.

"Is that why my eyes are less scary than Mom's and Dad's?" she asked.

My eyes widened, not expecting her to compare Ariel to herself. It hadn't occurred to me that Nessie could connect to Ariel in such a way as being only half human. Jake hadn't done so either. He stiffened as soon as Nessie spoke and pushed himself forward to be closer to her. He hesitated, not knowing what to do. Embry, Quil, and I stayed quiet. There was no way I was dealing with this shit storm waiting to happen.

When Jake spoke, it was in a trembling voice. "What do you mean, Ness?"

Nessie didn't look at any of us. Her eyes scanned around the room, never staying on anything long and frequently drifting back down to her coloring book.

"When I was still really little and I met Grandpa Charlie for the first time, Mom had to wear contacts to make her eyes like mine. Her eyes were still red then, and they thought it would scare Grandpa. I didn't get why. But it's because humans don't have red eyes, right? Or topaz ones. I've never met a human with topaz eyes either.

"And people get more scared of my family when their eyes get darker because they look even less human, right? But mine are brown, and that makes everyone happy. Because I look more human. Looking human makes people less scared. Even though I can do lots of things that my family can. I could kill a human. If I wanted. But they don't think I'm scary because I look like them. Looking different is what's scary to them."

Silence rang loudly in my ears. We all stared at Ness, who looked down at a crayon she was fiddling with in her hand. After a long, awkward moment, Jake got down on the floor to sit next to Nessie where she was kneeling in front of the coffee table.

"I guess that's all true," he told her softly. She looked up at him with wide eyes. "People are scared of stuff they don't understand, and they don't understand people with gills."

Nessie looked back down at Ariel. "But gills aren't bad. They help animals breathe underwater. Having gills doesn't change Ariel or make her bad."

Jake sighed. "No, it doesn't, Ness."

I glanced over at Embry and Quil. Quil shifted nervously in his seat. No doubt he had yet to have a conversation like this with Claire, and he looked frightened that it might be expected of him at some point in the future. He kept glancing over at the door as if debating ways he could get away without upsetting Nessie.

Embry caught my eye. He didn't look uncomfortable like Quil did, just pensive. He watched me for a moment before turning away, and I forced my attention to fall back on Nessie. She was coloring again, making Ariel's skin the same tones of green as her tail as though it were an act of defiance.

But she didn't draw any gills.

 **January 12th, 2009**

I couldn't even find the energy to groan when my alarm went off at a ridiculous hour. After a month of sleeping in, waking up for class felt like it might as well be torture, but I was an adult with responsibilities, whatever that meant. So I got up.

Seth was at the kitchen table eating cereal when I made it downstairs. Mom and Charlie were already gone.

"Morning," Seth greeted halfheartedly.

"Morning," I parroted back.

Seth grinned at the grogginess in my voice.

"Now you know how I've felt the past week," he gloated, taking too much joy from my misery. If only pouring my hot cup of coffee over his head wouldn't be frowned upon.

I sat down across from him with my toast, buttering it even though I didn't have much of an appetite. I didn't have much of anything when it was this early except for a need to go back to sleep.

"We'll see who's bragging when my semester ends before yours," I shot back, but Seth only shrugged in response, not bothering to worry about something so far in the future.

"How is this semester going?" I asked. I'd become less worried about how obvious my probing about Seth's well-being was, and he'd become less outwardly annoyed whenever I showed concern.

He just shrugged, not looking me in the eye. "It's fine," he said in a near monotone. "It's school. Same as always."

"That's…good. I guess."

Seth snorted into his cereal, shaking his head in amusement. "Yep. It's good. You thinking about telling me something, Leah?"

I frowned. Seth had been doing this the past couple of weeks. It was like he knew I'd had a revelation, and he was baiting me until I said something. But admitting I had feelings for Embry out loud was a step I couldn't bring myself to take. It would feel too real afterward, and my curiosity about Seth and Al wasn't enough to override that fear yet.

"Nope," I said, popping the 'p.' "Not really. Everything is the same as always here."

Seth stood up and put his bowl in the sink but didn't bother to wash it. Mom would get onto him about that as soon as she saw him next. He'd have to wash all the dishes tonight after dinner.

"Sure it is," he agreed as he gathered up his backpack in the other room. I was thankful he could no longer see me fidget. "You're still trying to push away your feelings for Embry, and it's not working. Same as always."

I growled. "Go to school, Seth."

He apologized, and I breathed easier once I heard the door fall shut behind him. I had at least ten minutes alone before I had to start the run to school and be inside of Embry's head. And have Embry inside of mine. Something that hadn't happened since the safe mental wall I'd built up between my feelings and my other thoughts had come crumbling down. Seth was only partially right. The feelings might have been the same as always, but this awareness of them was entirely new, and learning how to handle it had me flailing.

Just about every day of my vacation had been spent in Embry's presence, and I'd hoped everything would feel less overwhelming by the time we went back to school. It didn't.

Most of the time, someone else was around: Jake, Quil, Seth, someone. For a while, the two of us had taken to watching Nessie while Jake worked, and even though she was always quiet and content to do her own thing, she provided enough of a buffer that I didn't have to confront anything.

Somehow, Embry and I hadn't been scheduled to patrol together over the course of the two weeks, although I was sure I'd patrolled with everyone else at least once. That should have given me enough time to build up the mental capacity to hide my newer thoughts, but I hadn't been concerned about it until far too late.

I didn't trust myself not to screw up, no matter how much practice I had with concealing my thoughts from the guys.

The clock above the stove flicked up another number, and I sighed. With a quick swipe, I cleaned the remaining crumbs off the table and then swallowed down the rest of my orange juice.

I couldn't avoid meeting Embry. Avoidance would be more obvious than anything else I could do. This was something I had to confront. And by confront, I meant weave my way around what was actually wrong and act like everything was the same as before.

Usually, I tried to pretend like I was fearless, but in reality, I spent a good deal of my life in fear. The ironic thing was that the more fearful I became, the more desperate I was to maintain my brave image. It was true that I didn't want Embry to know about my feelings for him, but more than that, I didn't want him to know how scared shitless I was of him. Because if someone knew they had that power over you, what could they do with it?

I scoffed at myself as I wandered into the woods, heading for my usual stripping place. It provided enough cover that I felt sure I wouldn't be seen naked before I could phase.

Sure, Embry had a certain power over me that others didn't, but this was Embry. It was hard to imagine him using that to his advantage. The rational part of my brain liked to throw that fact out all the time. If I were to admit my feelings right now, Embry would do everything he could to make me feel comfortable regardless of his own feelings. There was no way he would do anything that could lead to me being shattered.

I knew that, but I didn't believe it.

The thoughts were banished from my mind as I felt the familiar sensation run through my body. In a strange way, phasing was more welcome than it had been in the past. The first hundred times of changing into my wolf form had been painful, but now there was a familiarity to it that I welcomed. Maybe I had gotten in touch with my masochistic side.

 _About time_.

I growled at Embry through our mind link, although he could have heard me if I'd done it out loud. He wasn't far from our house, apparently having come looking for me when I wasn't quick enough for him.

 _I can't be more than a minute later than usual_ , I shot back. _How would you even know? You can't check your watch as a wolf._

Embry didn't respond, just turned and started running in the direction of Port Angeles. I followed, still shooting him angry thoughts about how my timing had been just fine. It was an overreaction, but opportunities like this allowed me to keep the dangerous thoughts safely tucked away. Embry just ran. I'd have thought he couldn't hear me if that were possible. His thoughts were so empty that I almost could have believed he wasn't there if I wasn't able to see his wolf through the trees as we ran.

One absurdly long rant later, we arrived at school.

It looked the same as always, and the sight was one that had come to be increasingly bleak to me. College hadn't turned out to be the savior I had built it up to be in my wishful thinking. Joselyn being the exception. I supposed I would have gone through college again in order to meet her, but I was ready to be done with the rest of it after this semester.

"This feels so final," I said as we walked onto campus.

Some of the people around me were familiar. There were people I had never spoken to but could still recognize as students. Nothing about it was new or exciting anymore. Not that such a thing was bad. I wasn't sure I needed new and exciting anymore like I might have in the past, but I also didn't need this.

"Final? Leah, it's the first day of the semester."

I nodded. "But the last 'first day of the semester' for me."

Embry frowned as he nodded. Like he had forgotten. "Right. I guess that would be kind of final."

We wove our way through the students. I kept waiting for my phone to vibrate and let me know that Joselyn was waiting for us somewhere, but the interruption never came. We just kept walking in the direction of the library.

"You know what you're going to do after yet?" Embry asked.

He'd asked me that several times, and I still had nothing more than the same old answer. "No. Whatever job I can find."

He accepted it with a nod like he always did, but he had the same frown he wore each time we talked about my future. I'd always gotten the impression that he didn't like how unenthused I was, but there was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing _I_ could do about it. I'd spent exorbitant amounts of time trying to come up with something that I wanted to do with my life. I still had nothing.

"You'll figure it out," Embry said, breaking me out of the negative thoughts of the future that I'd sunk into.

He always said that with such confidence too, as if it were a sure thing. It wasn't. Anyone above the age of fifteen should know that not everyone wound up in jobs they loved. Some people just had to get by. It was easier if I accepted that fate now. At least I didn't have any dreams that would be crushed in a few months' time.

 **January 18th, 2009**

The house had been transformed since the last time I was there. Rachel had taken this housewarming party seriously, and everything was perfect. I could tell how much thought had gone into the placement of every tiny item throughout the house. I just didn't know if it was for the benefit of the guests or for the benefit of Rachel.

It was a bold move, bringing seventeen wolves into a place so immaculate. She'd opened up the backyard, which assured that most of the indoors remained free.

I was the closest I had ever come to being in one of those magazines that showed off fancy homes. My mother had put a certain amount of pride into the decoration of our house, but it was full of things that had been bought over the course of her and Dad's adult life. All at different periods of time. It was comfortable and homey instead of perfectly matched. Most of the houses I'd been in over the years were the same. Joselyn, as a college student, lived in an apartment that was horribly mismatched, with the cheapest of things she could find, even though she'd put effort into making it look put together.

This looked artificial. Every piece of furniture looked like it had been built to go with every other piece of furniture. All the colors were of the same shade without the slightest hint of variation.

I knew Paul and Rachel had both been saving up for this, but I didn't understand how they could have afforded to buy so many new things. I wasn't sure they had been able to, but none of us dared to ask.

"It looks great, right?" Rachel asked me as she stood over the stove.

I gave the customary glance back over the house before answering. "It looks great. Really great."

And it did, in a certain sense. I wouldn't want to live in a place like this, but I would commend the interior decorating of the place. It felt more like a work of art than a space to live in.

Emily spoke up from where she was uncovering the dishes she had brought. "You could take on a whole new job as an interior designer, Rach."

Rachel offered Emily a hesitant smile before turning back to the food she was attending to. Their friendship wasn't as icy recently. Emily had taken the house as a sign that Rachel wasn't failing as an imprint or whatever it was she had thought, and Rachel, trying to appear functional to everyone, had shown sympathy when Simone was thrust on Emily and Sam by offering to help babysit. But I could feel an underlying tension between the two that persisted, and I knew I wasn't alone. Kim tapped her fingers against the kitchen table's surface as if worried there would be more yelling.

Bella entered the kitchen, maneuvering cautiously around me until she was at Rachel's side. The Cullens had all been invited—the ones who were still left at least—as part of Rachel's attempts at connecting with her future family. Or something like that.

"You need any help?" Bella asked.

I wasn't sure how much help she could be with food after not eating any for years.

"No, we're fine," Rachel replied, barely looking up from what she was doing. "Almost done. Leah, you want to go ahead and tell everyone that they can come start getting food?"

I nodded and pushed myself off the counter I had been leaning on that separated the kitchen from the living room. I traversed around it and had to sidestep the young girls who paid little attention to me. Nessie and Claire had taken Simone under their wing, treating her like their own real life baby doll. They were walking on either side of her, each of her hands in one of theirs as they headed for the kitchen without prompting.

A sliding glass door from the living room led out to the back, and I slid it open, sticking my head out to where most of the guys were congregated just outside the door. They jumped up upon seeing me, having heard Rachel's words and taking my appearance as the official cue that they could come inside.

They stampeded past me, and I had to push myself against the wall to avoid any collisions. Once the initial rush had passed, I headed back towards the kitchen with the stragglers. I'd meant to go for my own food, but Rachel caught my attention before I could enter the fray. She was on the living room side of the counter, leaning over it as she watched what was happening in the kitchen. I walked over to her instead, leaning my elbows on the wooden surface.

Neither of us said anything as we watched the familiar chaos ensue. Emily was playing her usual role as peacekeeper.

"You getting anything?" I asked once the guys had spread out throughout the house and backyard with their plates full of food.

Rachel gave me a slight nod but didn't make a move. "In a second. Go ahead and get yours."

Taking that as a dismissal, I went to fix my plate and tried not to focus on the way Rachel stayed in the background the rest of the night.

 **A/N: I hope you liked chapter one. As far as updates go, these will probably be more spread out than when I was posting the last two stories in this series. I have a much lighter school load than last year, but I have more responsibilities in other areas that I have to deal with. That being said, all of this story is written and a good deal of it is edited. You won't be waiting too long.**

 **I'd be happy to hear what you think of the first chapter, and thank you for reading.**


	2. February

**A/N: Huge thank you, again, to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading this chapter. Also thank you to brankel1 and LeahMfkn'Clearwater for being the first to review. (And don't worry. You'll figure out what's going on with Rachel, although she's not in this chapter, and get more with Leah and Embry.)**

Chapter 2

 **February 13th, 2009**

The transition from your parents buying your sibling birthday presents with your name on it to having to do it on your own is an awkward one. Over the years, I'd always gotten Seth something small. It was never anything he wanted, but I always banked on "It's the thought that counts." My gifts always had a use, but Seth wouldn't be bragging to his friends about any awesome presents that came from me.

I could have done a better job if I stopped to think about what day it was ahead of time. Usually, I didn't remember until a week beforehand, and I'd scramble to come up with something that Seth would have bought for himself if he'd seen it.

This year I thought I knew what my present should be, and it didn't involve having to go to a store. Presents that weren't bought were a dream for college students, but it was hard to feel like I'd saved anything when I knew I was going to be emotionally spent by the time I'd given Seth this present.

We had a party with the entire pack planned for tomorrow, but this wasn't something I could give him in front of everyone. I wanted to get it over with, and it was better for him to think I hadn't forgotten. Although something told me Seth would have known what was coming when I gave him nothing else.

Seth had excused himself up to his room right after dinner, not wanting to spend time with the rest of us regardless of whether it was his birthday or not. This had become routine, and I missed the days where I could go downstairs and be sure to find Seth, even though I'd spent most of my own time locked away in my room. Now we both tended to be locked up in solitude more than we were with the family.

I knocked on Seth's door, listening to him shuffle across the room before he pulled it open.

"Yeah?"

I hesitated, not sure if I wanted to go through with this or not. Different parts of my mind continued to war with each other as I stood there.

"Can I come in and talk?"

Seth looked at me for a moment with no emotion and then stepped aside without a word. I brushed past him as he closed the door and took a seat on his bed. Seth followed suit, sitting across from me. He watched me with a calculated gaze, and I knew he could feel the nerves coming off of me.

For once, he didn't try to probe any answers out of me, possibly because he could sense that he was going to get everything anyway. I took a second to gather myself.

"You win."

Seth didn't gloat. He didn't even break into a smile like I'd been expecting. He just watched me, waiting for me to elaborate, so I did.

"I like Embry, okay? You were right, and I was wrong. I realized that a couple of months ago, and I still don't know what it means."

"What do you mean 'don't know what it means'? You like Embry. What more is there to know?"

How could he make it sound so simple when he and Al had been in the midst of their standoff for months?

"It's your turn," I reminded him. "That was the deal."

Seth looked away from me towards the wall, biting the inside of his cheek. I watched him fidget before he sighed. "It's my birthday. Do we have to do this now?"

"No." I'd allow him that slight reprieve if he wanted it. In fact, I might have welcomed it. "But we will. You're not going to escape it."

He nodded, and I knew what he had chosen. Maneuvering around so that he was beside me instead of across from me, Seth leaned back against his pillows. I followed suit to keep him from being behind me, although it was still harder to watch him closely than it had been before.

"Obviously, I like Al," Seth said with a shrug. His voice wavered as if he wasn't used to admitting this out loud. I could relate to the feeling.

"So." I prodded him with my finger. "If you're going to get all 'it's simple' on me about Embry, then why are you being difficult about Al?"

Seth gave me the stink eye, and I sighed out of frustration.

"What makes you think I'm the one being difficult?"

"It's not like I'm placing the blame solely on you here, Seth. Both of you are being difficult."

Seth grumbled under his breath, "No more than you or Embry."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked with genuine curiosity. "How is Embry being stubborn?"

Seth sighed and closed his eyes as if he didn't want to deal with the stupidity that I was somehow exhibiting without knowing it.

"He likes you. Obviously," Seth stated as if it were a well known fact. "Embry's liked you for ages, Leah. Way longer than you've liked him. Everyone knows it. They have for a long time. It used to be a bigger thing before the two of us started phasing. That's why he became an expert at controlling his thoughts. At least, that's what it seems like to me. He didn't want you to know."

Suddenly, I felt like I couldn't breathe.

"How do you know all this?"

Seth shook his head and closed his eyes before answering.

"Everyone knows it. The guys still tease him about it behind your back. It created a lot of tension between him and Sam when he first phased. Back when all of that was still fresh, you know? I didn't know about it at first since it all stopped when we phased, but I picked up on the guys' jokes eventually. They don't bother hiding it from me now that they realized I wasn't going to blab to you."

"Yeah, thanks for keeping me up to speed."

Seth shrugged indifferently. "I figured you'd make a big deal out of it. When you didn't like Embry, I mean. It didn't seem fair to sic you on him. Once you started liking him, I figured you two could work your shit out on your own. Apparently, I was wrong.

"Say what you want about me and Al, but at least we're not oblivious. I know what he's thinking, and he knows what I'm thinking. It's just more complicated than that."

I stared up at the ceiling of Seth's room, seeing spots in my vision against the stark whiteness.

"Maybe we're doomed." It was only half a joke. "Both of us are going to screw up forever."

"I probably am," Seth said, voice dark.

Something inside of me lurched, and despite it having only been a joke, I felt the need to take it all back.

"You just turned seventeen today, Seth. You're supposed to feel like your entire life is doomed right now, but it'll get better."

Seth scoffed. "Everyone pulls the 'it gets better' bullshit. Maybe it will, but it's just as likely that it won't. Either way, it doesn't matter because right now is complete shit."

"Yeah, I guess," I said with a sigh. "Are you going to tell me what happened between you and Al? Because I still don't get it. You said you both know about each other's feelings, so what is the problem?"

Seth let us sit in silence for several minutes before he began to speak.

"I think you know bits and pieces of it. I told you we knew about each other before we came out and that I realized I liked him. But then he was such an ass when I came out to everyone without him, and I don't know if I can forgive him for that."

"It's been months, Seth. I think you can work on it. Hell, I forgave Sam and Emily. Surely you can forgive Al."

"Have you, though?"

The question rocked me. I wasn't sure how to answer, but Seth saved me from my floundering by continuing.

"I know you have mostly, but you don't talk to them much. You're only with them when everyone is together. Emily used to be your best friend, but now she's like this person who you get along with well enough, but you don't choose to spend time with her. You're even more distant with Sam, and you thought you were going to marry him.

"You forgave them, but it didn't fix everything. You can't fix everything. I've forgiven Al too. We're not, like, fighting or anything like we were. But can I be with him when he acted like such a shithead?"

I reached out to loop an arm around Seth's shoulders and tug him into my side. He came reluctantly but without much struggle.

"Seth, if you're holding out for someone who's never a shithead, I think you're going to be waiting an eternity."

He groaned. "I know. I really do. This just feels different. We both felt the same way, and then he said all that stuff. It bothers me when I think about it. I don't know if I can get past it, and I should be able to get past it if I were going to date him, right?"

"God, I wish I had an answer to that. You should know better than to come to me for relationship advice."

Seth laughed, and I felt proud that I had at least managed that small step.

"I'm not sure, though," I continued. "The words may still hurt, but maybe what's more important is if Al still hurts you? Like, if I think too much about what happened between me and Emily, then it hurts. But seeing her and talking to her now doesn't feel the same way. It's not like it used to be, but it's not painful.

"Forgiving people doesn't mean what they did no longer hurts you, I don't think. It just means trusting them to learn from it and not make the mistake again. Do you think Al has?"

I watched as a storm of emotions flickered across Seth's face. He was quiet for so long that I wasn't sure I would get an answer. Then, he took a deep breath and spoke.

"I don't know. I've been too scared to talk to him to find out."

Nodding, I reached over to shove him gently. "I guess that means you know your next step."

Seth shook his head in exasperation, but I had high hopes that he would take this conversation to heart. This whole conversation would prove more beneficial to him than to me. I knew how strong Seth's feelings were, and I knew Al's feelings rivaled them. I'd seen enough in both of their heads. Besides, Seth would always be this ball of happiness in my eyes, and it was difficult to believe that anyone would be able to reject my little brother when he was such a genuinely good person.

"You know yours too, you know?"

Tossing Seth an exasperated look, I said, "No, I don't, but I assume you're going to tell me it's admitting my feelings to Embry."

"Obviously. You can't sit here and tell me to work things out with Al if you're not going to make any effort with Embry."

"I can because they're two different situations. You know Al likes you, right?" Seth blushed but didn't try to argue. "You can try to convince me that Embry likes me all you want, but I don't believe you. Telling you to make it work with a guy you like who you know likes you back is entirely different than me saying anything to a guy who may or may not like me."

"There's no 'may or may not.' He does," Seth muttered, but it was so quiet that I knew he didn't want to confront me over it. There was no use. Instead, he changed the topic back to himself. "I do want to work things out with Al, and I will. It just scares me, so I haven't."

"You can't live life scared," I said mockingly. God knew I had never heeded that advice.

"And I don't want to," Seth said, choosing to ignore my sarcasm. "That's why I'm going to do what you want me to do. Soon, hopefully. I want you to try and make yourself happy too."

"Seth," I said, trying to keep the real emotion I felt over my brother's sympathy out of my voice, "I am trying to make myself happy. I've been trying for years."

Seth's expression softened as he looked at me. "I know you are, sis. In a lot of ways. I just think this is one area where you're holding out. You're not letting yourself try. You could be happy if you and Embry opened up to each other."

I offered Seth a small smile. "Maybe," I allowed.

There was no use arguing in circles over and over again. I knew Seth wanted me to be happy, and I wanted him happy too. But it turned out that my little brother was more like me in the stubbornness department than I used to believe. Maybe, unfortunately, he had also developed some of my bad luck when it came to relationships.

There was no quick fix to either of our problems, but maybe we'd get there eventually.

 **February 23rd, 2009**

Screw Intro to Psych. "Intro" implied something easy enough for a beginner to understand, and there was nothing easy about this class. I'd been studying all weekend, and I didn't feel prepared for the test I had to take in an hour. There was no time to enjoy my lunch with the test looming over my shoulder.

Joselyn and Embry both ate in silence after I had shushed them one too many times. A small part of me felt bad for ruining their meal for my own selfish reasons, but too much of me was consumed with doing well on this test to care at the moment. If only I could remember which psychologist went with which theory…

"Um, hi."

I startled when the girl spoke while standing right above our table. The food court was too busy for her footsteps to have alerted me to her approach. I'd brushed them aside along with all the other people walking around. I stared at the stranger, not getting why she was there. I'd never seen her before as far as I could remember.

She looked quickly at Joselyn and me, but her eyes settled onto Embry as if he were familiar. My stomach churned, and for the first time all morning, I was concerned about something that wasn't psychology.

I didn't answer the girl's greeting since her eyes weren't on me. Joselyn did though, her "hello" sounding like a question. I didn't like the glances Joselyn kept throwing me as if she knew this might upset me. We'd never discussed any potential feelings I might or might not have. It was hard enough having to deal with that from Seth. Over time, though, I had started to realize that Joselyn suspected more than she let on. She had to. She was one of the people who spent the most time with both Embry and me. If anyone were to figure it out, it would be Joselyn.

There was no logical reason for the jealousy bubbling up inside of me. Looking at the girl, I could tell that she was attractive, but I had no idea if Embry had any sort of feelings for her. He was smiling at her with the same smile he gave Joselyn every day when we met up with her. This girl was just as likely a friend and nothing more than she was anyone else.

Yet there was something about the way she looked at Embry that had me on guard. She didn't look like she had come over to flirt, but she did look nervous. Maybe she was shy, but something had me wondering if it was more than that.

Embry, being his usual self, was harder for me to read, but as far as I could tell, he wasn't looking at her any differently than he did anyone else. It should have given me some relief.

"Hi, Sydney," he said to her with a smile.

She repeated her greeting while bobbing back and forth on her toes. "Sorry to bother you," she continued, glancing at Joselyn and me again. "I was wondering if you knew when our project in Math 144 is due? I looked at the syllabus earlier, but I swear Professor Grove said something different in class the other day. I wanted to double check."

"You're not bothering us at all," Embry assured her. I felt my stomach turn over as I imagined him asking her to stay and sit with us, but he didn't. "It's due on March 15th, I think, but I'd have to check to make sure."

"Okay. Thank you." She hesitated for a moment, not having anything more to say but not quite sure if she should leave. Embry smiled at her awkwardly, not giving her a cue as to what she should do. "Bye," she said eventually, ungracefully flapping one hand in the air before scampering off.

Joselyn snorted as soon as the girl was out of earshot. Embry shot her a glare, but all Joselyn did was shrug in response.

"I'm not laughing at her," she said in her defense. "It was the both of you and how awkwardly you let everything play out."

I wasn't sure if "both of you" referred to Embry and the girl or Embry and me, but I had a feeling it was the latter from the way Joselyn glanced in my direction. Embry didn't pick up on it as he took another bite of his sandwich.

"She's a nice girl," he said. "In my math class. She helped tutor me once when I didn't get the lesson, and sometimes she still asks if I need extra help."

There wasn't any excess fondness in the way he spoke about her, but my stomach still wouldn't calm down.

"She likes you," I said suddenly. My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat.

Embry's head snapped over to me, eyes wide and disbelieving. "What?" he exclaimed in shock. He began shaking his head back and forth as if eager to deny it. "She doesn't. We're just friends. Wh-Why would you think she likes me?"

For several seconds, I struggled to speak. I knew there were countless things I could say. I'd had some of them on my tongue before Embry had interrupted me. Now I couldn't find them anymore. I was too distracted by the almost fearful way Embry was watching me. It had thrown me off course.

"I don't know," Joselyn said, breaking the tension. Her eyes were focused on scooping up a bite of pasta, keeping her removed from whatever emotions were floating between Embry and me. "She did look a little fidgety. Is she always like that?"

Embry hesitated over an answer, shifting back and forth as he thought over his past experiences.

"Kind of," he admitted. "I've always figured she's shy."

"Is she like that with everyone?" I managed to ask. Embry's eyes snapped back to me again, and I schooled my expression into one of indifference.

He drew out his words, speaking slowly. "I think so. I've never paid attention."

His words made breathing a little easier. If he wasn't paying close attention, he couldn't like her, right? He'd be cataloguing every bit of her personality he could discover if he did.

I was too busy thinking about that to come up with an answer, but Joselyn saved me.

"She might just be shy," she said with a slight nod, taking that to be the most likely case. I still wasn't sure.

"Have you not tried getting to know her better?" I pushed.

Embry watched me, an odd mix of emotions on his face. He looked confused as he shrugged.

"Not any more than I've tried to get to know other people in my classes. Sydney's a cool person. I like her as a friend and everything, but I never considered liking her more than that."

"Why not?"

It was such a stupid question. Was there any way I could have been more obvious? I wanted to bash my head into the table in front of me. The words had come out before I'd been capable of stopping them.

"'Why not?'" Embry repeated in confusion. I noticed Joselyn watching us curiously from the corner of my eye, but I didn't pay her much attention. "I just haven't. I don't have a detailed explanation for why I don't develop feelings for every single girl I meet."

Nothing about that answer was unreasonable, yet I felt unsatisfied. I wasn't sure what it was I wanted to hear.

"But what if she does like you? What then?"

Embry gave a hopeless shrug. "Then nothing changes. I'm still not interested."

"But she seems nice," I reminded him, a hint of bitterness in my voice.

"She is nice, but I can't date every nice girl I know."

"You can date one of them."

Embry had been watching me peculiarly this entire time, but that caused him to freeze. "I could," he said, drawing the words out in confusion, "if I wanted to date them. I don't want to date Sydney."

I shrugged, looking back down at the psychology textbook that I no longer cared about. "Okay."

I didn't say anything else, and I didn't look back up to see the expressions on Embry's or Joselyn's faces. There was a long moment of silence. Despite the commotion around us, it felt like one of those moments where you could have heard a pin drop. Joselyn was the one to break it.

"Well then, look at the time. Leah, you and I have class."

I glanced at my phone. She was right. We each had class in fifteen minutes. I had my test. Embry, who was still free for another hour, would go to the library. I wondered if he'd see Sydney again while he was there.

Scolding myself, I pushed the thought from my mind. Whether he did or not, it wasn't my business.

"Right," I replied to Joselyn. "Let's go."

I gathered up my things and hurried for the door, pausing only to toss my trash away. Not once did I look back at Embry to see what he was doing. Joselyn followed along behind me, not speaking until we were outside the building and far enough away that I knew Embry wouldn't be able to hear us over all the other people.

"That was interesting," Joselyn said. There was amusement in her voice, making me want to bury my face in shame.

"Shut up."

Joselyn put her hands up in mock surrender. "Sorry, but there's no way we can just not talk about that."

"Yes, we can. Easily. By not talking about it."

"Leah."

"Joselyn."

Joselyn sighed and took a moment before speaking again. "Seriously, though. What brought that on?"

I shook my head, but I knew I was going to lose out. She wouldn't drop the subject.

"I don't know. Okay? I don't know. Suddenly, that girl was there, and I don't know what came over me."

"I know exactly what came over you: jealousy."

I closed my eyes, embarrassed at my actions. "Yes, jealousy. I know, but I don't know why I was jealous. It was stupid."

"It was," Joselyn agreed. "But understandable after you've been bottling everything up inside like you have."

"I'm not some ticking time bomb," I shot back.

Joselyn shrugged. "As your asexual friend, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on romance, but even I know that trying to repress all that stuff is going to drive you crazy."

"A lot of things drive me crazy. I still manage."

"This is different, Leah. Letting Embry become your friend was such a huge thing for you. You can take it to the next step. I know you don't believe you can, but you can."

Coming up with something to say in response was impossible. It wasn't like Joselyn was wrong. About me becoming friends with Embry that is; I wasn't as sure about the believing in me part. That was difficult for me to do in this area of my life, just like Joselyn knew it was. So I chose to stay silent, walking at Joselyn's side until we had to go our separate ways.

I managed to bomb the psychology test, but I'd lost the ability to care.


	3. March

**A/N: Thank you again to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading this chapter, and also thank you again to brankel1 for your review. I'm excited to hear what you're reaction to this chapter is because I'm quite happy with it.**

Chapter 3

 **March 10th, 2009**

"Would you rather have a pet phoenix or a pet unicorn?"

"What's a phoenix?" Claire asked Nessie, struggling with the unfamiliar word. Nessie obliged Claire's request for more information. Unloading her knowledge onto Claire and Simone was one of Nessie's favorite activities. I wasn't sure if she got that much of what she said went right over their heads. But the idea of an immortal bird that catches on fire was something they seemed to understand.

I stared at the television, not interested in what was playing but feeling clueless as to how else I could pass the time. It was my spring break. Everyone else was either in school or being real adults at work. Emily was resting, since I'd offered to babysit the girls for the day. I was in need of a way to pass the time after Embry told me he'd be off doing something important for most of the day.

He hadn't explained what it was he was doing, which meant, of course, that I was dying to know. It had felt strange when he hadn't offered the information as he normally would have done, but I hadn't asked for more, not wanting to appear too interested in every aspect of Embry's life. God knew we spent enough time together.

We'd seen each other every day of spring break so far. One day wasn't going to kill me.

Simone had decided that phoenixes were her new favorite animal within two minutes of learning what they were. She ran around the room, flapping her wings as if she were one until it came time for her to burst into flames and crumple to the floor dramatically while making the necessary sound effects.

Nessie and Claire weren't taking part in that particular fun. I was sure Claire would proudly inform me that she was too old for such games if I asked her about it. That was a recent development. Claire had become obsessed with being like Nessie over the last several months, and she was trying harder than ever to mimic Nessie's maturity. It didn't always work. You'd see her twitching as she fought the urge to do something that wasn't Nessie-like. But it did mean that their games had become quieter than they had been in the past.

It made babysitting her easier, if nothing else.

Simone, on the other hand, felt no drive to calm down. I didn't know if I had seen her play a game yet that didn't involve yelling at some point, at least not since she had gotten over her initial fear of each of us.

I watched her running around while Nessie and Claire chatted on, ignoring the youngest girl. They were providing me with more entertainment than the television, and they were hardly doing anything.

"Leah," Nessie announced, rising up onto her knees on the couch to get a better look out the window across the room. "Embry is here!"

My body stiffened. When I tuned in over the noise Simone was making, I could hear someone approaching the house. I rose and turned to look out the window for myself. Sure enough, it was Embry.

Why was my heart racing? I'd known he was likely to come over after he was done with whatever he had been doing. He had said so.

Nessie and Claire made it to the door before I'd even been able to confirm that it was Embry. I hoped they weren't that responsive to strangers, especially when Embry threw the door open. Both of the girls began chattering to him in excitement, almost matching Simone in volume. He ruffled their hair as he herded them into the house and shut the door behind them.

Once the girls had run off again, he looked over at me with a smile. "Hey," he greeted, stepping into the living room.

"Hey," I returned, settling back into my seat on the couch. He sat down beside me, only a foot of emptiness between us. "How's your day been?"

"Good," Embry said. For a while I didn't think he was going to say anything else. Embry wasn't the chattiest person, but I did expect more details than that. This was the guy who used to catch me up on all the pack news every weekend. Embry didn't skimp on the important details of things. What had he been doing today?

I pretended to be watching the TV, not having anything else to say. My day had been little more than sitting on this couch watching three little girls run around, and I knew Embry knew that. No use trying to make it into anything interesting.

When the show went on a commercial break, it was harder to pretend like it was holding my attention.

"You're here earlier than I expected you to be," I said.

Embry turned away from where he'd been watching a chip commercial. "How late did you think I'd be?"

I shrugged. I'd had no idea, but the longer it had been, the less likely I'd thought he was to show up.

"I wasn't sure."

Embry nodded. "I wasn't either actually."

So he hadn't known how long whatever it was would take? I nodded along, trying not to reveal anything I was thinking. I turned my eyes back on the television only to hear Embry sigh.

"You know you can ask me, Leah."

I stiffened again. Then I felt a wave of disgruntlement over being caught.

"You know you could always tell me, Embry."

The comment made me sound like a five-year-old, but I couldn't take it back. It was already out there. Embry watched me with surprise as I flushed. Finally, he smirked a little.

"I could," he admitted. "Do you want me to?"

I let out a strangled noise of annoyance as I turned my face away from him. I was sure he was smirking if I dared glance in his direction again. There was a tense moment between us before he said anything else.

"There's this group project for my math class. My group met up with each other."

That caught my curiosity, and I forgot my embarrassment as I turned to Embry in confusion.

"A group project in math?"

Embry shrugged. "Don't want to explain it when I had to stare at it for hours, but yeah. I just got back from Port Angeles."

"Oh."

"Leah," Simone called from the kitchen. I hadn't realized that she'd disappeared, and I jumped up, hurrying into the other room. She had a chair pushed up against the counter where she had been attempting to climb, but by the time I reached them, Nessie had talked her back down to the floor and had her arm around the younger girl. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"She wants water," Nessie explained. "I told her she shouldn't climb up there herself. She said she didn't want to bother you and ask."

"Thank you, Ness."

Nessie smiled up at me in response to the praise.

I walked over to the counter where Simone's empty sippy cup sat and filled it up with water before handing it over to her. She took it, smiling up at me nervously before running off when she realized I wasn't getting angry at her. That was one of the rules of dealing with Simone: I had to control my temper. She got nervous around adults, and it got worse if she saw them lose their temper.

I leaned against the counter once the kids ran off again. I hadn't exerted myself but felt like I needed to catch my breath. Several seconds passed before Embry appeared in the doorway.

"I'm a terrible babysitter."

He smiled encouragingly. "You're not. It's not your fault she disappeared for, like, three seconds. She's fine."

I nodded even though my mind was running through all the ways she could have wound up hurting herself. I was never nervous around Nessie or Claire. Not anymore at least. But I'd been nervous around Simone since she showed up. She felt fragile. It was strange in comparison to Nessie's indestructibility.

With a sigh, Embry made his way across the kitchen until he was leaning against the counter beside me. His arm brushed against mine, and I felt a shiver pass its way through my body. He was silent. I knew this was his way of comforting me without being too nauseatingly sentimental. Such a large part of me wanted to turn towards him and let him pull me in. It took far too much self-control to resist.

"Why didn't you want to tell me about the project?" I whispered.

Embry shifted, arm pressing into mine for a split second.

"Sydney's in the group."

He let that hang between us, not adding anything else.

"And why did Sydney being in the group mean not telling me?"

His arm brushed against me again as he took a deep breath.

"Because I knew it would bother you." I didn't answer that one, and apparently, that didn't sit well with Embry. " _Why_ does it bother you, Leah?"

I still didn't answer. I couldn't. It was taking all my energy to regulate my breathing and appear calm. My brain went into overdrive, and somewhere in all the confusion, I realized the girls were in the other room with no supervision, just what I had been scolding myself for minutes earlier. I pushed past Embry with no explanation and went into the living room.

Simone sat quietly on the couch between Nessie and Claire, helping turn the pages of the cardboard book Nessie was reading out loud to them. It was the story of the three pigs and the big, bad wolf. The irony wasn't lost on Nessie either; she giggled as she said the wolf's lines.

I took a seat in the armchair closest to the couch, keeping my eyes on the girls, so I wouldn't have to watch Embry enter the room behind me.

He didn't enter the room like I expected. Instead, he stood inside the doorway of the kitchen, watching me. Finally, with a sigh, he spoke.

"We'll talk about it later, Leah."

I didn't respond or even look at him. Nessie glanced at me for a split second before her eyes fell back down to the words she was reciting.

With a slight growl of frustration, Embry left, letting the front door snap closed behind him harder than was necessary. Nessie paused in her reading, but before that, Claire and Simone were both looking up and at the door with wide eyes. The three of them looked over at me as if they sensed something was wrong and I was responsible for providing the explanation.

I said nothing, eyes focused on the surface of the coffee table. After several long moments, Nessie started reading again, picking up where the wolf started trying to huff and puff the brick house down.

 **March 12th, 2009**

Whoever decided that having babies in hospitals was a good idea was an idiot. Yeah, yeah. There was medical stuff that was important. I got that. But over the course of my life, all I had built up in my memory about hospitals was negative stuff. My mom was a nurse. She'd never shied away from telling me the worst of the stories she'd gained over her years of working in Forks Hospital. I was sure there were good things too. She'd probably even shared them with me, but that wasn't the stuff I could remember.

Now, the biggest memory in my mind while standing in the harsh lighting of the hall was my father's death.

It hadn't happened in a hospital. He'd been dead before they could get him here, and I'd been a wolf at the time, not in the right mindset to come here even if he had made it that far. Yet that was all I could think about as I sat there in the lumpy chair that was supposed to be comfortable. It had seen a few too many people in its time.

Nothing about this place spoke of babies, and we were in the damn baby ward of the hospital. Wasn't anyone bothered by the…plainness? But then, it wasn't the plainness that was the problem. The problem was that this plainness was just like all the other plainness in the building. The dying people and the babies got the same thing. You could go out the same way you came in.

Even the atmosphere of the waiting room was too much like someone was waiting to die. It took me back to the battle with the newborns and Jacob being injured. When we sat around at Billy's that night, we'd all been as quiet as we were now. The anticipation of "what will happen next?" was the same.

Embry shifted on my right, and I glanced over at him. We hadn't spoken over the past two days. This spring break was shaping up to be the exact opposite of the last as I lazed around at home and didn't see Embry at all. He didn't look over at me despite having been the one to take the empty seat beside me.

It had been that way for nearly an hour, since he'd first arrived. Not all the guys were here. Most of them were at school or work or didn't see the point in sitting around at the hospital. Seth sat at my other side, having been pulled out of school for the day after Emily went into labor. Emily's brother sat across from me; his wife was back in the delivery room with Emily, Sam, Emily's mom, and Kim. Rachel sat beside him, but she tapped her foot as if she could be doing better things with her time. I wasn't sure why she was staying. Maybe to prove something.

Paul sat at her side, but he'd only been here for ten minutes. He'd come and gone several times today. Each time he was here, he would sit in stony silence beside Rachel for half an hour or so before getting up and leaving again, still not saying anything. The strange behavior wasn't helping with the eerie feeling that had been building up in my stomach for hours.

Al and Simone rounded out our group. After he got out of school for the day, Al had picked Simone up from Quil's to bring her to the hospital in hopes that the baby would be here not long after they arrived. Emily wanted her to meet the baby as soon as possible to help her feel included in the moment. Emily had been big on that since Simone came.

But it had been an hour since Simone and Al arrived, and the baby still wasn't here.

Of all the wolves who could have volunteered for Simone duty, it was no surprise that Al had taken it up. Seth had looked so surprised when the other boy appeared and even more so when he'd sat down beside Seth and stayed. It was cute.

It also provided me with more amusement than I'd gotten the rest of the day as I watched Seth squirm. Al was being as quiet towards him as Embry was me. We were all hopeless.

Mom rounded the corner, still in her scrubs and looking frazzled from the long work day. The look on her face said it all as she took us in: We looked pathetic.

"They let me off early. Have you heard anything recently?" she asked.

I shook my head, seeing several of the others do the same. Mom nodded like that was to be expected.

"I'm going to see if I can find Andrew and ask him what he knows."

That was a benefit of having a mom who worked at such a small hospital: she knew everyone here. If we couldn't get any information out of someone, my mom could. She disappeared down the hall in the opposite direction of where she'd come, towards where Emily was.

"The baby's slow," Simone whined. I sighed. Simone rarely complained. This was only the second or third time I'd heard her do so since December. If she was saying something, then she was really getting restless. I wasn't sure how much longer she could hold out at the hospital, even with the handful of toys she'd brought with her.

"It is," Seth agreed, the tiredness coming through his voice. He'd had to wake up for school that morning. I was lucky I had gotten to sleep in before I got the call. Even with those few extra hours, I felt like dozing off.

"It can't be that much longer," Embry said.

Mark, Claire's father, spoke up upon hearing that. "Sasha was at the hospital for nearly twenty-four hours before she had Claire."

There was pity in his tone as he broke the news to us. For as long as it felt like we'd been sitting here, Emily hadn't taken half that long yet. Seth groaned, leaning back in his chair to stare up at the ceiling in frustration.

"Don't you have homework you could be doing?" I said.

He shook his head. "I got pulled out of second period," he reminded me."I wasn't there long enough to get anything. For the first time in my life, I wish I did, though. I'm going to have all the makeup work tomorrow when I don't want to do it instead of now when I might as well be doing it. There's nothing better to do."

I glanced over at Al, who was watching Seth quietly, his infatuation glaringly obvious.

"Do you have anything you should be doing?" I asked Al. The kid was only fourteen. If he was going to spend his entire evening in a hospital, I felt like someone should be making sure he did the work he was supposed to. He wouldn't have the excused absence that Seth had gotten.

He glanced up at me and then looked away guiltily. "Yes," he admitted. "But I'll have plenty of time later."

Deciding to take his word for it, I didn't push. How much homework could an eighth grader get? I could always ask again later if he still wasn't working on it. I didn't have much authority to make him do it anyway. Well, aside from the authority of being his beta, but I didn't think homework fell under the category of wolf duties.

Mom came back around the corner, drawing our attention without saying a word. Simone ran up to her before anyone could open their mouths to speak.

"Aunt Sue." She reached up in a request to be held, and Mom obliged. "Did the baby not wanna come?"

Mom laughed, patting Simone on the back. "The baby's coming, sweetheart. She doesn't have much of a choice." She turned to the rest of us to give the more grown up explanation. "She was at ten centimeters when I got back there. They'll be coming out to tell us the baby's here any minute now."

I heard Rachel mutter a, "Thank God," under her breath. Simone squirmed out of Mom's grip to go back to her toys, looking cheerful after being reassured that the baby was almost here. Everyone else exhaled sighs of relief too. It turned out that waiting could be exhausting. It drove everyone to restlessness.

But it turned out that knowing something was close made time go even slower. Despite the relatively short time span until someone came out to find us, it felt like it had been ages, and we were so on edge that all of us jumped out of our seat when Kim rounded the corner with a large smile on her face.

"She's here." Kim bobbed up and down on her toes as she spoke. "Cynthia Chloe Uley. Eight pounds, four ounces."

Simone was already in front of Kim, tipping her head back to look up at her.

"Baby!" she exclaimed loudly.

"Baby," Kim agreed, smiling down at the girl. "Do you want to come back and see her?"

Simone nodded eagerly and took Kim's hand.

"You guys can come back too if you'd like," she said before she began leading the way. We filed after her, looking like a large, hectic group to the hospital staff. But no one stopped us like I half expected them to.

Emily was propped up in bed when we entered, a tiny bundle snuggled in her arms. Sam was by her side, with everyone else who'd witnessed the birth surrounding them. Simone hurried to the bed but paused once she got there, looking up at Sam and Emily with wide eyes as she waited to see what she was allowed to do. They both smiled at her, and Sam bent down to pick her up without a word, placing her on the bed next to Emily and the baby. Simone leaned in eagerly, and Sam managed to mutter, "Careful," to her quietly.

The rest of us stayed at the edges of the room, letting them have a moment to themselves. I noticed that Seth and Embry were still on either side of me, and Embry kept shooting me quick glances as if he were checking to see how I was doing. I raised my eyebrow at him, and we maintained the most eye contact we'd had all day. He flushed and glanced away.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. He hadn't talked to me all day, so I was already feeling peeved. But Embry should know better than to think I was still caught up enough in the Sam and Emily debacle to be bothered by their happy, little family party. Actually, I did find it nauseating, but not in a different way than I would have been watching any couple being overly sweet.

The kid did look like a mixture of Sam and Emily, remarkably so considering she'd only popped out minutes ago. I gave the customary remarks about her cuteness, held her until she started to fuss and I had an excuse to shove her back at Sam (gently, of course), and then left with Seth.

Other people might have been more enthusiastic about a new baby. All I could think about was Embry and that look in his eyes in the hospital room.

 **March 26th, 2009**

Running to and from school was the most exhausting part of my day, and it was never from the physical exertion. Keeping my thoughts in check had become crucial, and the mental fatigue of it often left me with little motivation to study by the time I made it home.

Not that I would have been able to study anyway with the way Embry occupied my thoughts these days. It was pathetic. I felt like a middle schooler all over again. I hadn't been like this since Sam, and I hadn't thought I would be this way again. Wasn't this all-consuming feeling something you grew out of? It was for kids, not adults.

But I couldn't think about that as I ran. I wouldn't let myself. Instead, I focused on my surroundings in a personal version of I Spy, cataloging the forest for no reason other than it kept my mind on one track. I'd counted more flowers over the past several weeks than most people count in their lifetime. There was a surprising amount of variety around here when I bothered to focus in on it.

Embry probably thought I had developed a flower fetish. I couldn't know for sure because blocking out Embry's thoughts was my second biggest job during our runs. It came along naturally with keeping away my own thoughts when I focused on my game. If he thought I was going crazy, I didn't know it.

 _Leah!_ The mental yell jerked my attention away from counting my 1000th something pine of the day. That was the first time Embry had attempted to gain my attention back.

 _What?_ I focused on keeping my mind clear while waiting for his answer. The practice probably made me appear more concerned about his answer than I was. Okay. That was a lie. I really was concerned about whatever it was that had caused Embry to get my attention.

 _Phase back._

I couldn't formulate a response to that request—or, possibly, command. My confusion traveled through the pack connection loud and clear. I didn't need any words.

Embry's only explanation was, _Phase back, so I can talk to you_.

He phased out himself after having the thought, not giving me time to question him. Having little choice left in the matter, I ran over to a thicket of bushes out of view and phased, slipping my clothes back on as quickly as possible before I met Embry again. He looked frazzled, like he, too, had dressed as quickly as he could, paying little attention to how his clothes went on. His shirt was twisted too far to the side.

"What the fuck?"

"What are you hiding from me?" The question was out there before I had been able to get out my exclamation of confusion.

I stumbled over several attempts at words, not able to make any of them work. Finally, I managed to get out, "I'm not hiding anything."

"Bullshit, Leah."

My heart pounded in my chest. I'd been found out. Not that I'd been doing too great of a job hiding it, but I felt exposed all the same.

"You've hardly spoken to me in, like, three weeks, Embry. Why the fuck are you accusing me of hiding things?"

He looked ashamed of that. And he should. I'd tried several times to talk to him since spring break, and each time had been stiff and awkward. Something was off between us, and Embry had put less effort than I had into trying to fix it. He had no right to accuse me of anything. Even if he was right.

We stared each other down, neither one wanting to be the one who broke first. Then, Embry growled. "Fine. Fine. I'll go first. I don't care. We're talking about this."

"About what?"

"About us! God damn it, Leah."

If my heart had been beating loudly before, now it was going berserk. My breathing became shallow, and I struggled to concentrate on filling my lungs.

"What about us?" Embry looked down at the ground. "Embry, you said you'd go first. What about us?"

I stared at Embry as he continued to stand there in silence. His gaze was on the ground at our feet. He kicked at a small, newly bloomed flower. It crumbled, now dead. With a sigh, Embry looked back up at me. There was fear in his eyes. A new fear I hadn't seen before.

This moment was important. I could feel it.

Looking me straight in the eyes, Embry said, "I need to know how you feel about me, Leah. For real. No lying, no concealing anything."

I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat but was unsuccessful. "You said you'd go first," I reminded him.

"That is me going first." He took a step closer, watching me as if scared I would run away at any second. I wasn't much of a flight risk, but something about realizing that he had the fear made me determined not to reveal any weakness.

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I couldn't make it come. My mind ran through dozens of possible things I could say, all of them true and all of them the sort of things Embry wanted me to confess. But none of them would come out no matter how hard I tried. Embry took a step closer, looming over me so that I had to crane my neck back to look at his face. It made the knots in my stomach tighten. I couldn't do this.

"Leah," Embry tried again, but all him saying my name accomplished was me starting to shake my head frantically from side to side.

Embry sighed. His defeated expression showed that he had no hope that I would reveal anything to him. My stomach sunk. I didn't like causing him that disappointment. I really couldn't say it. It hadn't been a decision.

Every part of my body was tense, poised to run at any second. Just standing here in front of Embry was taking every ounce of self-control I had. There wasn't enough left in me to do anything else.

Embry took a step closer, and I sucked in a shallow breath. Embry paused, hands up as a signal that this was harmless. But it wasn't. Not really. Not one part of this was safe. We'd already crossed the line, and there were going to be irreparable consequences.

"Leah."

I couldn't help it; I whimpered. It was exposing, but I was unable to control my reaction. He had to stop saying my name. That, more than anything else, was driving me to insanity. It was full of too much affection, more than what should have been there.

For months, I had stubbornly refused to believe Seth's words about how Embry felt, but now I realized that my brother had always been right. I'd been the one refusing to see what was right in front of my face. I was an idiot, a fucking idiot. I'd let everything become screwed up, and there was no fixing it. There was going to be a train wreck no matter what anyone did.

After pausing for a moment, Embry kept moving forward. I pulled in every ounce of self-control I possessed to keep myself from bolting. Instead, I stood firmly in place. If I didn't move, then maybe, just maybe, Embry wouldn't be able to tell how he was affecting me.

Even as I tried to convince myself of that, I could feel myself trembling.

As he stepped closer, my eyes fell on his lips. I knew what he was doing, the one reason he needed to be close to me. His eyes mimicked mine, flickering down to my mouth, and my heart sped up. There was so much in his expression, too much for me to sort out. Affection, care, even lust. I didn't know what to do with that, how to react.

The scariest part was realizing that so much of that had been in how he looked at me before. It wasn't new. Embry had cared for me for a long time, longer than I wanted to know. And I'd been oblivious to it. Gloriously oblivious for the longest time.

"Shit," I muttered, my voice shaking. It caused Embry to pause, a question working its way into his eyes. But I couldn't explain myself. I couldn't put into words the massive revelations happening inside my own head, not when he kept getting ever so slightly closer. He moved at an agonizing speed that was both too slow and too fast. My mind tried to figure out what to do, whether to kiss him or to stop him.

I wanted both so badly that it hurt deep in my chest.

Finally, there was little space between us. One more step and we would be pressing into each other. I looked up into his eyes. It was the first time I'd been daring enough to hold his gaze with this much intensity. I could feel the heat radiating from his body and mingling with mine, warming us both even more than we already were.

When Embry opened his mouth to speak, I expected the spell to be broken, but instead, his voice sent tingles down my spine and added to his undoing of me.

"You have to give me a clue here, Leah."

This was it. Embry had made his move. It was my turn to direct my own pieces. The fate of the both of us was in my hands, and I still didn't know which side of me was going to win out. Not until I allowed myself to stand there for a few moments. It felt as if parts of Embry were radiating off him and mixing with parts of me, like the two of us were becoming intertwined despite not touching one another.

He made me feel exposed. I hated him.

I pushed myself up on my toes in a moment of abandonment. My brain shut off, not knowing what to do with the sensory overload and giving up completely. Embry got the hint, leaning down to meet me halfway.

His lips touched mine. Nothing before compared to this. Now I really was going to die. There was no way I could survive this. It had been so, so long since Sam, and I hadn't kissed anyone since. I'd hardly touched anyone since, not in a romantic sense. Kissing was foreign, and I thought my body might go as far as to destroy itself from the inside out as I felt everything at once.

I lost track of how long we kissed. It was many movie cliches in one kiss, so many things I had never expected to feel after having my delusions shattered by Sam. This type of thing didn't happen, not like in the movies. They ended. They always ended. Maybe not through a breakup, but at some point, both people became disillusioned. No one stayed ridiculously in love forever, and the stronger you felt for each other at the beginning, the further the fall was in the end. I was setting myself up to walk right off a cliff.

My body felt like it was being doused in ice water. I felt colder than I had since phasing for the first time and boosting my internal temperature.

Embry pulled away first, having felt the sudden stiffness that came back over me. He pulled away, and as I stared up at him with wide, scared eyes, I could see that he knew. He knew what was going through my head.

The heartbreak in his eyes was unbearable. Already, seconds in, I had us teetering over the edge. This was why I couldn't be allowed this. I would ruin it before it could begin.

My body moved, taking a step back. I dropped my arms from where they had been around Embry's shoulders and instead wrapped them around my abdomen. Embry's arms fell to his sides as he deflated, looking defeated.

I could tell from his demeanor that I didn't need to say anything. He knew. He always knew. Before I could say a word, Embry had worked out what was going on in my mind, but he also knew that it was pointless to fight me over it. I would only become strengthened in my convictions. We always reached stalemates, never resolutions.

Still, I needed to say something to make this concrete for the both of us. I couldn't leave it open ended.

"I can't," I choked out. The two words fought against being voiced and were hardly distinguishable, but Embry nodded. His eyes fell to the ground, off of me, and I was able to suck in a breath again.

I wanted to say more, but it was hopeless. All I could do was get away. My body and mind wouldn't work until I was out of Embry's presence. I turned and ran, staying in human form, so I wouldn't be confronted, especially by Embry. I couldn't be in my own mind, let alone anyone else's.

Getting home, I realized that everyone else was gone. I ran through the house without slowing down, collapsing into a pile of tears on my bed. By the time everyone else came home, it was a thing of the past.


	4. April

**April 3rd, 2009**

I heard the steps coming towards my room and perked up. Having the room at the end of the hall meant I always knew when someone was coming to see me before they got here. I was the only door left. I also knew it was Seth. His footsteps sounded different than Mom's or Charlie's.

He knocked on the door, and I told him, "Come in," halfheartedly. I'd turned back to the book spread out on the bed in front of me by the time Seth stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He didn't say anything at first, just sat down at the foot of my bed beside the books I had been trying to study. I pushed myself up onto my elbows to look at him better.

"What is it?" I asked, though I had a good guess. Seth had been giving me these looks for the past week, like he knew something was up but was waiting to see if I said something about it first.

"Nothing," he replied in faux casualness. "Just wondering what was going on and stuff. We haven't talked the past couple of days."

I hadn't talked to anyone in La Push over the past couple of days. I ran to school at the usual time every day, but Embry was never there. On the third day, I'd been able to track his scent and confirm that he was going to school before I phased each morning. He didn't show up whenever I spent time with Joselyn either, and despite her suspicious looks, she hadn't asked me about it yet.

I'd been acting withdrawn, a lot like how I had always been a couple of years ago. I knew that, but I didn't have the motivation to change it. No matter how many sad looks those around me kept sending in my direction. I was going to wallow for a while. That was reasonable. I was keeping it together better than last time. They should be thankful for that.

I didn't bother to answer Seth. He was smart enough to know that I didn't want to talk about it. He sighed when I didn't speak, adjusting himself on the bed to get comfortable. I raised one eyebrow, questioning why he was sticking around, but he ignored it.

"I patrolled with Embry today."

My heart lurched hearing the name out loud, but I didn't give Seth the noticeable reaction that he was studying me for. I flipped through several pages of my textbook in a pointed gesture. I was supposed to be studying. None of that meant I wasn't keeping my attention trained on Seth to hear what he said next.

"He was off the entire time," Seth continued. He knew how closely I was listening. "Kept almost running into trees." I looked up at him in unconcealed surprise. Seth nodded, glad to get some type of response out of me. "Yes, it was that bad. It was like watching a train wreck except there was no ending. It just kept going and going."

I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. It wasn't like I hadn't expected Embry to be affected. He had to be if he was avoiding me like he was. But that didn't make hearing about it any easier, and I hadn't thought it would be as bad as what Seth was making it sound like. It had been one kiss. Even if Embry did like me, had my running away been enough to make him that upset?

This wasn't supposed to be like me and Sam. That was why I'd run in the first place: so it couldn't get that far. Embry couldn't be distraught from one failed kiss.

Even if it felt like much more than that to me too.

Seth and I fell into silence. I kept flipping through my book, not seeing anything but blurs on the pages. Seth watched me, and I refused to look back up at him, keeping my eyes trained downward.

"Or maybe this is the aftermath of the train wreck," Seth continued. I tried to tune him out, but it was hopeless. "These two trains were supposed to travel alongside each other forever, but instead, they veered into each other and left all this damage, then shot off in different directions. Now they're veering all over the place because they're damaged, but both of them refuse to stop and fix everything."

I struggled to blink back the tears that were filling my eyes.

"That was shit, Seth." Even as I reprimanded him, my voice broke, and my tears became harder to control. "How the fuck would that work? Trains can't hit each other like that without tipping over, and then they'd never keep going."

"Not the point, Leah."

I shrugged, going back to flipping through my book. I was almost to the end. Soon there would be no more pages left to flip unless I went backwards.

"Leah." Seth sighed. He stood up from the bed, and for a second, I thought he was going to leave me in peace. But then he flopped back down again, this time mirroring my position by laying on his stomach. Now we were parallel and on the same level. His confrontation felt less intimidating, and he couldn't stare at me directly anymore.

"You've got to do something," he said. "Everyone's noticed that something's up with you guys. In our pack they have at least. We're all worried even though none of us gets what's going on."

"You mean you're all wondering about me and Embry the same way we all worried about you and Al for a year. And still kinda do."

Seth rolled his eyes, but I was right. The guys didn't have any more of a right to know what was happening between me and Embry now than we had to know what Seth and Al were arguing about before. If Seth didn't come clean then, he couldn't pressure me to do so now.

"I want you to be happy, Leah."

"And I've always wanted you to be happy too. Have you talked to Al?"

"Yesterday." I shot him a warning look, and he conceded, "Not about that." I nodded in satisfaction, having known that I was right.

"When are you going to?"

Seth sighed and buried his face in his arms.

"I've tried. At least I've actually tried." I fought the urge to snap back at him, instead letting him continue. "It's just so hard to do it. I don't know how to bring it up anymore. We used to talk so easily, and yesterday there was this weird formal feeling between us when I got him to talk to me. It feels wrong to talk about anything deeper than the weather."

I could sympathize. I could imagine being in Embry's head and not even being able to manage sharing thoughts about the weather. Instead, all I got was stone cold silence.

"You'll figure it out," I assured him, and I meant it. If there was one person in this world who deserved a truly happy ending, it was my brother, and he damn well better get one. I needed to know that happiness was possible for the best of people, if not the majority. Seth was great with people; he drew them to him. He'd already done the same with Al. They just needed to get past this bump in the road.

Seth was jumping over a pothole. I had to contend with the Grand Canyon.

I didn't want to discount the fact that Seth was struggling, but he and Al were on a different playing field than Embry and me. They'd overcome obstacles that had helped bring them together and would lead them to a bright future where everything was better. I was dragging Embry into a disaster without meaning to.

"I hope we do," Seth admitted. "A lot of me thinks we'll be fine once we deal with stuff. It took a long time for me to manage to feel that way, but it doesn't stop me from being scared all the time that things will always be like this. For a long time, I didn't want to admit that I liked Al like that. Then I thought there was no way we could be together because of the circumstances. Then I thought we'd both screwed up too much to fix it. Now I've realized none of that is true, but it's still a struggle to know where to start fixing things."

When I didn't speak, Seth leaned over to nudge me in the shoulder. I pushed him back harder.

"I get what you're trying to tell me, Seth, but I don't agree with you. No matter how much you keep talking, Embry and I are different than you and Al."

Seth shrugged. "You are in that you are you and Embry is Embry, but you're still not in an unfixable situation. Actually, you might be better off. You could fix things faster if you did it right now and didn't let it get gradually worse like Al and I did."

"Seth, your version of fixing things would only lead to it getting worse."

His brow creased as he fixed his gaze on me. "Leah," he said in a pained voice.

"Seth," I echoed, closing my book and staring at the back cover. "Just leave it."

Seth sighed but got up from the bed and moved towards the door. "Fine," he allowed. "I will for now."

And with that, he closed my bedroom door behind him. I listened as his steps sounded down the hall. He was going downstairs, not to his room. Was he going to go spend time with Mom and Charlie or was he going out somewhere? Maybe somewhere with Al? Wherever it was, at least he'd left me alone to wallow some more.

I felt like I should have a giant tub of ice cream with me like in the movies, but in all honesty, I hadn't been hungry the past couple of days. At times, it had been difficult to remember when it was a meal time. It just wasn't what my brain was worrying about. No amount of ice cream would fix anything, and it wouldn't make me feel better emotionally either.

Pushing my textbook to the floor and savoring the loud crash, I rolled over onto my back, resting my head where the book had been. The ceiling of my room was plain white and as boring as a ceiling could be. The ceiling light burned my eyes as I stared upwards. I welcomed the sting of it as I strained to keep them open.

 **April 18th, 2009**

On the third year of sharing my birthday party with Al and Robbie, we didn't discuss whether or not it would happen. It just did. By now, our joint party was a tradition. One that I imagined would be a permanent part of our lives in the future.

While in the past I had let Robbie and Al decide the details for themselves, this year I had taken charge. With everything happening with Embry, I needed as many distractions as possible. School wasn't enough. I couldn't take one second of free time. If that meant packing in so much that I couldn't sit still for one second and was getting less sleep, then I was fine with that.

When I'd begun my plans, Al had been unresponsive anytime I brought the party up to him. He would shrug, maybe give a one-word answer, and that was it. He truly hadn't cared how the party turned out, so I'd given up including him by the time he and Seth started appearing much happier. He hadn't bothered to help me then either, but I was okay with that. Finally, Seth was learning that I had been right, and I wasn't about to begrudge them spending all their time together.

Robbie was more enthusiastic to help. He'd become such a ball of light since coming out, a huge contrast to Seth and Al in recent months. While before his secret had always kept him closed off, now he was almost too forthcoming at times, wanting to share his thoughts with everyone. He had realized that we were all stuck with each other, and he could say anything to us without being ostracized. He'd responded by talking to us all the time about anything that crossed his mind.

He reminded me so much of Seth when he'd been that age that it was painful to be around him at times, and I struggled not to let Robbie realize that. After seeing him in such a vulnerable place, I wouldn't be the one to make him doubt himself again.

So I planned the party with Robbie and a little help from the resident pack party planner Emily. And by that, I meant that I used Emily's vast knowledge of how to best plan parties to do the brunt work myself while I let Robbie feel involved by asking for his opinion here or there and doing my best to follow what he wanted. I didn't care how it turned out. What was more important was the distraction it created.

On the day of the party, I woke up early to set everything up in our backyard. Mom and Charlie were both still asleep. Seth had taken the early patrol today. It had become a routine for them. Seth took the patrols early in the day; Al took the ones late at night. They were the least sought after patrols, and the routine meant both boys knew they wouldn't have to deal with the other. It would probably change soon enough, but for now, the old schedule was in place. My heart lurched when I realized that Embry had been patrolling with Seth for weeks. Not once had I patrolled with him. Maybe we were doing the same thing as Seth and Al.

I yanked the plastic wrapper off the cups I was putting out. I wasn't thinking about that; I wasn't. I was thinking about the party, not Embry. I didn't have time for Embry.

Setting the now open cups down on the table, I moved on to the container that would eventually be full of ice that was sitting beside it. I stuck some prongs inside of it for later and replaced the top. I didn't know why I was bothering with ice. None of the guys would use it, but it had given me another thing to worry about. It had felt like an easy enough thing to do, even if Emily had said it wasn't necessary.

Seth appeared out of the woods, and I offered him a small smile as I moved to the drinks themselves, repositioning the bottles unnecessarily. Seth came over, fiddling with the cups I had just placed on the table to give himself a distraction.

"Happy early birthday," he offered. I stopped long enough to shoot him a look.

"It's not for three more days, Seth. We live in the same house. I think you'll be able to find the time to say it on the actual day."

Seth nodded, dropping the cups. Now they looked messier than they had seconds ago. I rolled my eyes but managed to bite my tongue.

"I'll say it then too," he promised. From most people, I wouldn't have been sure they were telling the truth, but I knew he would. Seth had never forgotten to tell me happy birthday any year since he first learned to say the words. I doubted he would until the day he died. It just wasn't in his nature.

"You want help?" Seth continued.

I considered it for a split second. There was plenty to be done that I could pile on Seth, but then I'd have less to do.

"No, no. I've got everything under control."

I turned away before I could see the look in Seth's eyes that I knew would be there. Maybe it was obvious why I was working myself into a frenzy over this party. I didn't care.

"Okay," Seth said, heading for the house. "Let me know if you change your mind."

We both knew I wouldn't. Not unless it came down to the wire and things still weren't done. Considering the current hour and the fact that the party was in the afternoon, it was doubtful that I'd run into that problem. Emily would be here before I ran into that problem anyway, and she was the most efficient person I had ever met in my life. She wouldn't let anything run late. It was like her reputation depended on it or something.

I followed Seth into the house. Of course, I'd decided to bake a cake from scratch all on my own. I hadn't even accepted Emily's help. My determination to not screw this up for Robbie and Al was enough to keep me from creating something unedible. One could hope.

I took a deep breath as I looked at everything I had laid out on the counter. This felt like one of the most intimidating things I had ever faced. The guys weren't going to be the most forgiving of taste testers. It didn't matter that they scarfed down food as if its taste was worthless; they would tell me if it was inadequate. They also required a lot of cake, more than anyone should ever have had to make on a first attempt.

The recipe looked easy as long as I followed it. I'd chosen a vanilla cake, thinking it would be the easiest, but I'd conceded to Robbie's request for funfetti icing since he wasn't getting it for his cake. He'd also been the one to pick out the rocky road and cookie dough ice creams sitting in the freezer.

Everything was mixed together by the time Mom came down the stairs. She leaned on the doorframe and watched me pour the batter into the pan. I smoothed out the top, making sure it was evenly distributed. If I was going to screw up, it felt like now, what should be the easiest, would be the time I did so.

Once it was in the oven, I leaned against the counter. Mom stepped farther into the room, making her way over to the cabinets where she pulled her favorite mug down. She pulled out the coffee pot that was half full of coffee I had made earlier that morning, pouring some into her mug before she started sipping it down black.

I watched as she sat the mug on the kitchen table and went to the fridge to search for her breakfast. She didn't say anything until she was sitting at the table with her coffee and her food.

"The cake smells like it's going well."

"I hope so," I said with a sigh. Smelling her cup of coffee was making me want more of my own, but I'd drank too much already, chasing the caffeine high that had never been as strong since phasing. I would have died to be able to feel it again. Some mornings were miserable without it, yet I chugged down coffee like it would make a difference.

"My shoulders are stiff," I complained. "Baking a cake is hard, and I'm a wolf. How does Emily do this all the time?"

"Anything becomes easier once you've done it enough."

It was true, but it didn't explain away my surprise at how physical of a process baking turned out to be. Mixing together the right ingredients at the right time was a struggle I'd been expecting. I wasn't expecting to feel tired afterward. Although part of it might have been the tension I'd been holding in as I worked out of fear that I would screw up at any moment.

"Seth said he offered to help," Mom continued when I didn't respond to her piece of wisdom.

I'd heard them talking upstairs not too long ago, but I'd been too focused on what I'd been doing to pay attention to what was being said. I'd figured it wasn't anything important. They were far more likely to be discussing who got to use the bathroom first than anything pertaining to me.

"Yeah, he did. I told him he didn't need to. I have most of the stuff set up already."

Mom raised an eyebrow, but she didn't comment as she raised her mug to her lips. I knew it was too early to have everything ready, and I didn't have _everything_ ready. The cake was a testament to that. It still had to bake and cool and be frosted. I had purposefully left it until late as a way to ensure I had something to occupy my time for as much of the day as was possible. If it didn't, I'd do what I always did these days and pull out my textbooks. I'd become a remarkable student lately. Maybe too remarkable.

It wasn't like I was unaware of how much I was overworking myself. I just didn't care. I'd survive it. I was a wolf. Studying too much wasn't going to be what killed me.

Besides, this was only temporary. At some point, I would feel better, and I wouldn't have this incessant need to fill my mind up with anything and everything. I'd done it before; I could do it again. With time, everything that bothered me would be nothing more than the past.

"How much do you know about before your father and I were married?"

I looked up at Mom in surprise. "Nothing," I stammered out. It was true I realized. I'd never talked to either of my parents about their lives before I'd come along. It had never occurred to me to ask about their relationship or how they came to be married. Thinking about it now, that felt odd. I had to have received tidbits here or there about my parents' former lives. I knew, of course, that they hadn't magically appeared before my birth. I had to know things about them that I couldn't think of at the moment.

My mom nodded like she had expected this. "I never talk about those years much," she mused. "Not because they were bad, but because they're in the past. I'm not a sentimental person. I don't stop to think about my memories often. It feels like ancient history now, but maybe you would benefit from the story."

Benefit? How would I benefit from a story of my parents' past? Sure, it could be nice to listen to, but how would it affect my life decades after it had happened? Something told me that, if I asked, Mom would give me one of those disapproving looks that showed that I should realize the answer. So I nodded instead, waiting for her to continue as the smell of cake filled the kitchen.

"You know, at least, that your grandmother on my side was from the Makah Tribe and not Quileute." I nodded along to that with confidence. That was something I had heard about from my grandmother plenty before she had passed away years ago. "As a child, I always felt distanced from the Quileute traditions. In some ways, being closely tied to two tribes was a blessing, but as a kid, I saw it as a barrier keeping me from fully being either. It kept me from belonging as much as I could have.

"Every child goes through a period of wanting to belong, and I was no different. My heritage was a large source of those insecurities for me.

"High school was when I started to move past that and feel more confident about who I was. A lot of that had to do with your father. He was several years older than me, already in one of his last years of high school when I became a freshman. I'd paid him some attention for a while. He was older, of course, which my friends and I found appealing, but he'd also been nice to me in ways the other boys hadn't in the past. There was a genuineness to it that I appreciated. I knew my friends did too."

None of this was surprising. The teenage boy my mom was describing sounded a lot like the father I knew later in his life.

"So you were friends?" I asked.

Mom shrugged. "In a way, we were, but not really. He had a group of friends, and I had a group of friends. We knew each other not unlike the way everyone knows each other in La Push. We were friendly with each other more than we were friends. But I did have a crush on him as early as middle school. I didn't think he paid attention to me, and for the most part, I tried not to pay too much attention back.

"There was a dance my freshman year, and I knew right away that I needed a date if I was going to be considered cool." I had to stifle a laugh at the thought of my mom of all people struggling to be perceived as cool. Today she would glare at anyone who dared insinuate that she was not, and no one would dare do so for that reason alone. "I wound up going with this one boy, Ethan's uncle actually, who had never spent much time with girls yet. He was a nervous wreck.

"His brother, Ethan's father, also happened to be good friends with your father. Your father was over at his house before the dance and saw how nervous Ethan's uncle was before he came to pick me up. Your father, of course, felt bad that the boy was so nervous. Nervous enough to vomit all over the front yard when he was leaving to come get me." I cringed, imagining the scene far too clearly in my mind. "Yes, from what I heard, it wasn't a nice thing to witness, but anyway, his parents didn't want him going to the dance after that. They thought he might be sick. I'm not sure if he was or not, but either way, I had no date less than an hour before we were meant to be at the school."

There could only be one way this story was going. "Did Dad take you instead?"

Mom smiled as if she were in on a secret joke. "Yes, but not like you're thinking. Remember, he already had a date himself, and he couldn't abandon her for the freshman girl he hardly knew. It would have been rude. He picked me up, and I went to the dance with the two of them. But I still didn't have a date. I was on my own."

I frowned. Something here had to have led to my parents getting together. At least I assumed it did, or why tell the story?

Mom continued, "Your father's date was actually my date's sister. And your dad's best friend when he was younger. They'd been pushed together by her parents, who had always wanted your dad to be part of the family. They thought that it would be perfect, and she was infatuated enough with him that it seemed like a fine idea, one that would make everyone happy."

"Except it didn't," I said. "Obviously. Not if you and Dad wound up married."

Mom nodded. "Exactly," she said. "As it turned out, your father was bringing her because he didn't want to upset a family that he felt close to, but he had never been interested in her romantically. He said she felt too much like a sister after they had grown up together. It was hard for him to view her any other way. He knew she had a crush, and it was difficult for him to let her down. He didn't want to do it and had been hoping she would realize on her own that they weren't compatible. She didn't."

"But she was his date to the dance," I mused. "How did you and Dad get close? Was it that night or later?"

"That night sowed the field, I believe. It was what set things in motion despite nothing happening between us. I stuck by my friends even though they didn't have much time when they had dates of their own. Your father danced with me three times over the course of the night, not wanting me to feel alone. I could tell it aggravated his date, but she was too nice of a person to complain. She was always a sweet girl. I remember feeling bad about it, but I was desperate enough to not feel like an outcast that I accepted his offers anyway."

"You said you kind of liked him then, right? So you already had feelings?"

Mom smiled fondly and nodded. "I did, not that I let him know that at first. I stayed as neutral as I could. He told me later that he'd thought I hated him because of how blasé I'd been, so I was more successful than I had hoped."

I gasped in surprise. "Dad thought you hated him?" The idea of it was shocking to me after watching my parents over the years.

But Mom nodded once more. "For more than two years, he did. He hardly spoke to me after that dance, thinking that I didn't want him to, but I spent the next two years trying to figure out what I had done that was so repulsive that he didn't want to be around me. It was funny in retrospect, but frustrating when I think of how many misunderstandings there were between us. Who knows what would have happened if either one of us had admitted our feelings from the get go."

I smirked. "So Dad liked you too then?"

Mom blushed. It was rare for her. The only times I had seen her do so over the course of my lifetime had always involved Dad. Not even Charlie had ever elicited the reaction when I was around, but Dad used to give her compliments that made her flush. Apparently just thinking about them had the ability to do it too.

"He did, but I never would have known it. You know your father. He was always excellent at controlling how he expressed his emotions. As soon as I met your grandfather, I knew it came from him. Peter was such a stoic person, far more than your dad."

I remembered that about my grandfather too. I'd found him intimidating as a kid because I could never tell when he was happy. But I knew that he'd also been a kind man, just one that never felt comfortable sharing his feelings with others. Only Grandma had been able to figure out what it was he was thinking. I'd admired that aspect of their relationship, the intimacy that came from knowing someone that well. My parents had it in many ways as well, although it had never been only my mother who was able to read my father.

"So how did you find out about the each other's feelings?" I asked, bringing it back to my parents. That was the story my mom wanted to share.

"About a year after that dance, your dad made it as clear as he could to his friend's sister that he wasn't interested in a relationship. It wound up damaging his friendship with his friend too. That's why you never knew him. Sometimes they still act cold towards me whenever I see them. He told me later that he didn't want to pursue anything with another girl immediately after that. He still hoped he could mend the friendship, and he'd have a better chance of that if he wasn't dating anyone else.

"Needless to say, it didn't work. After a year, he'd decided it was hopeless to keep trying to regain their trust, and he found he still had feelings for me."

"Even though he thought you hated him?" I couldn't stop a smile from spreading across my face.

Mom smiled too, a far away look on her face. "He'd graduated by then, but I was only a junior. Your dad was working at the bait shop, not too far from the school. I had to walk by to get to and from school, and your father and I started talking every day. It was nothing much at first, just hellos as I passed. But after several months, we began saying more to each other. Eventually, I was stopping there on my way home each day for an hour or more to talk to him about everything that crossed either of our minds. It was easier for him to see that I didn't hate him after that. Eventually, he asked me out, and we were together until he died."

I blinked away a few tears. Speaking about my father wasn't as taboo as it had been right after his death, but it still made me emotional to an extent that nothing else ever could. Especially when I was watching the happiness on Mom's face as she reminisced.

"That's a great story, Mom."

She nodded with a smile. "It is. I'm glad I've shared it with you."

"Why did you?" I asked, only stopping to wonder about her motivations now that she'd mentioned it. "You never have in the past."

Mom shook her head as if she didn't understand it herself. "I've never been one to dwell on the past. I know I haven't shared many stories like this with you over the years. Your father was always the one concerned about the importance of passing on memories, but he never shared our story either. I think he saw it as something I should share with you.

"I guess this is for him in a way, but that's not why I've told you. I realized a week ago that you could benefit from hearing the story for yourself."

"Benefit?" I frowned at her. "I do appreciate learning about you and Dad, Mom, but I don't get how I benefit from hearing about something that happened to you."

"Remember the most important part of that story, Leah. I told you that your father and I misunderstood each other for years, but everything worked out between us in the end. It's never too late for anything as long as both people feel the same way. And you can't know how someone else feels without talking to them, no matter how intuitive you think you are."

I'd never considered myself intuitive. Intuitive people were people who watched others and learned to pick up on signs. They were more concerned with the behavior of those around them than I was. But I was a wolf and in seven guys' heads on a regular basis. When it came to them, I thought I had learned enough to know them. It wasn't intuition; it was having heard enough of their thoughts to get it.

Mom was trying to reference Embry without saying his name. I knew she was. But I didn't have to make a guess about what Embry thought the way I would anyone outside of the wolf pack. I knew what my brothers within our pack were thinking the majority of the time. Embry had always been the most difficult for me to read, but I got him well enough.

Silence fell over the room. Mom finished her breakfast and headed back upstairs to finish getting ready for the day. I occupied myself by going over things I had already done, double checking that it was still in place.

My mind began wandering more than it had been before speaking to my mom. For the first time in days, I couldn't find it in myself to stop the thoughts about Embry. Not after listening to Mom's story. Whatever she had meant to accomplish, she had succeeded in making me introspective.

I wasn't thinking about her and Dad. Not really. Instead, she'd managed to remind me of Grandma and Grandpa. They'd died when I was eleven, only seven months apart from each other. Despite my sadness at the time, my fairy tale obsessed self had found it romantic. A good deal of my memories of them were blurred and biased towards happy endings considering I had been a preteen. I had no way of knowing what I would think of their relationship if I were to see it today, but without that knowledge, much of how I viewed it was still tied up in fairytales. Their marriage was the closest I had come to seeing a real one.

I snorted as I shifted some containers around in the fridge. Saying something like that was ridiculous when I was surrounded by imprints. I knew people who could say unequivocally that their significant other was The One. Wasn't that a fairy tale? It was otherwordly, for sure, and it held the guarantee of A Happily Ever After that most relationships didn't get. My parents hadn't had that guarantee. They'd held it together for decades anyway. They knew that they had would last without anyone confirming it for them. That said so much more to me than any of the imprints ever could.

There was one memory that always came to mind whenever I thought of my Clearwater grandparents. I was in the kitchen with Grandma while she cooked dinner. Grandpa was still at work. Seth and I were spending the night, but Seth was curled up on the couch taking a nap. At home, he would have been woken up by our mom in fear that he wouldn't sleep that night, but Grandma was lenient with rules when we were at her house. That was something Dad said only applied to her grandchildren.

I was nine, and I loved helping Grandma in the kitchen because it meant that I got to hear stories. She would tell me everything about the past. When I was really young, I'd been convinced that Grandma knew everything, but by nine, I had started to realize that wasn't the case. I still thought of her as a treasure trove of stories, ones that were often more interesting than those in my storybooks.

That night she was chattering on about something her sister had done when they were young when she paused, staring at the wall for a moment.

When she spoke again, it wasn't anything I expected. "Your grandfather's going to be in a bad mood when he comes in. We'll have to cheer him up."

At that age, I had been more apt to believe in magic, but even I was skeptical of Grandma knowing Grandpa's mood when she hadn't seen him since that morning. She couldn't have read is mind or something as unbelievable as that.

But when Grandpa had entered the house not fifteen minutes later, it had been with a scowl on his face that made his annoyance clear to anyone who looked at him. It had only taken another ten minutes before Grandma had gotten him to smile, but the events had stuck with me all these years.

More than a decade later, I still couldn't figure out how Grandma had known. It would be a mystery to me for the rest of my life. She'd never claimed to be a psychic, and while I might have called her intuitive at times, she didn't guess anyone else's moods without observing them firsthand. Somehow, she knew Grandpa well enough that she could predict his future actions and feelings.

Maybe Grandpa had a habit of being annoyed on certain days or maybe she had known something was going to happen that particular day that was sure to tick him off. There were a number of logical reasons for her comment as long as Grandma had been paying attention. But even as an adult, I couldn't shake the feeling of magic that had overcome me when I observed it as a child.

From then on, I'd been convinced there was something special about Grandma and Grandpa's relationship. They were the yardstick I judged every other relationship by. While with Sam, I'd come to know him well, and I'd fancied us as working our way towards achieving what my grandparents had achieved. That was the happy ending I pictured for us: a marriage modeled after Grandpa and Grandma Clearwater's marriage. Many of my daydreams had mirrored memories I had of them together.

After the breakup, I hadn't allowed myself to dwell on my happy ending anymore. Thinking about Grandpa and Grandma made me think about Sam. He had come to so thoroughly invade my memories of them, so they were pushed from my mind for years with only fleeting thoughts whenever something happened that directly recalled a memory for me. But now I thought about Embry and my inability to know what he was thinking at just about any occasion.

That wasn't what I had imagined for myself with the person I would be with. I'd longed for someone whose every thought I could know before they'd thought it. Someone whose every action I could predict like they were a movie I'd watched a hundred times. I didn't have that with Embry. I wasn't even close to having that with Embry. I might have gotten close at times, but I was never really there. Maybe that was why I was convinced it wouldn't work. It didn't fit the ideal marriage I had believed in for so long.

Except we kind of did in a strange way, even if it wasn't how I had pictured it as a child. Embry always knew what I was thinking. I realized that now more than ever. He'd read me easily on that day we kissed. I hadn't even needed to voice my thoughts for him to understand. He had me down like Grandma had had Grandpa, but I didn't understand him in the same way.

And I couldn't figure out why that was. After closing myself off to the world for so long, how had Embry managed to break through if I couldn't make the same strides towards understanding him? And what did that mean for us?

 **April 26th, 2009**

Jared and Kim's wedding was turning into as quiet of an affair as anything the wolves were invited to could be. It looked like something I had imagined Kim would put together. Few people other than pack and their closest family members were here. Emily and Sam were the entirety of the wedding party. All the decorations were simple. There was little to distinguish that this was a wedding instead of a normal pack gathering. The only real difference was the chairs arranged in neat rows facing the area where Jared and Kim would stand with the minister, with flowers lining the aisle.

I followed Seth into a row halfway down Kim's section. The idea of a bride's side and a groom's side had broken down, with the pack dividing themselves with no rhyme or reason. Seth sat down next to Jake, who had Nessie for the day.

Embry wasn't here yet, but I felt bad for monopolizing one of his best friends. It wasn't a thought that would have entered my head over the last several years, but it was beginning to take ahold of me again. Jake had been Embry's friend long before he was mine. These days we were all so close that I sometimes forgot about the past when I had viewed them as nothing more than annoying little boys or annoying boys I had to listen to in my head. I hadn't had to think about who was really friends with who in such a long time.

Now it felt relevant again. I felt like Jake couldn't be my friend because he'd been Embry's first. I couldn't spend time with the person who had become one of my best friends because Embry's claim on him was older and, therefore, stronger.

Jake didn't seem to think that way. He smiled at Seth and me as we sat down. I stared at the back of the empty chair in front of me, not focusing on much of anything while Jake and Seth talked. I felt weird here, like I should move and go sit with someone else. It was ridiculous. I knew I had as much of a right to sit here as Embry would have, but part of me worried that Embry wouldn't see it that way, that he'd be angry that I'd somehow stolen his friend.

Then Quil showed up, Claire in tow, and sat down in the free chair on my opposite side from where Seth sat. It caught me off guard, but I chided myself for being surprised. I was sitting with Jake, of all people, of course Quil would sit here. But it was more than that because I knew I'd become close to Quil too. We were friends. It wasn't strange that he was sitting with me, and I wouldn't have given it any thought a month ago.

By now I had realized that Embry was guaranteed to sit with us too. There were still two seats open on Claire's other side. There were few open chairs left in the place, with most of the guests having arrived. There'd be just enough to sit everyone invited. Embry didn't have many options left.

Minutes before the wedding was set to start, he sat down. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had started worrying that I had scared him away.

Throughout the ceremony, my thoughts were preoccupied. This had gotten out of hand. A month was too long to go without speaking to Embry, and I needed to fix it. I wasn't sure how, but I needed to figure it out.

Jared and Kim finished their vows, and the area we sat in was transformed into the reception area. It was as downplayed as it had been for the ceremony, with limited decorations. I stuck with Seth and Jake and Quil and, of course, Embry because there was nowhere else for me to go. Each row became a table, and when we retook our seats, we were in the same order as before, Embry now directly across from me.

I kept my gaze on the tablecloth as we waited for the reception to get underway. None of the others seemed to notice anything suspicious, which was strange. They were aware of how little Embry and I had seen each other lately. I was scared to look up and see the expression on Embry's face as he was made to stay in my presence. But he didn't seem to be struggling to get away either. He went along with it, although I didn't know how much of a struggle this was for him.

Eventually, I chanced looking up and caught Embry watching me, a thoughtful look on his face. In a moment of daring, I smiled at him. My heart stuttered as he smiled back. It looked hesitant and worried, but it was there. That meant more than anything could have at the moment.

We got a bit lost, staring at each other with growing smiles. Claire broke us out of it when she started whining. The look Quil shot Embry was apologetic, as if Quil, King of Being Obtuse, was sorry for having interrupted a moment between us.

My stomach sunk, thinking that it was over. The moment had come and gone. It wouldn't mean anything in the long run. We'd continue going like we had been, forgetting the way our eyes had been trained on each other.

Then Embry and I started making more eye contact as the night went on. Neither of us said anything to each other directly, but the glances were enough to know we had made progress. That was all I could ask for. We participated in the same conversations without addressing each other. It felt like a huge step.

By the time Seth and I were setting off for home, I felt lighthearted in a way I hadn't for days. I could have been floating on a cloud. All because Embry had smiled at me a few times instead of ignoring my existence. This was what my life had come to. It was one jumble of idiocy. I was embarrassed to admit the emotions that whirled around inside of me.

"Hey."

I gasped at the voice behind me, turning around to see Embry behind us. We'd left the wedding technically, although we were still within view of the lingering guests. Embry's eyes stay trained on me except for a brief glance at Seth like he was pretending the greeting had been directed at him as much as it had me.

"Hey," Seth and I both echoed. Seth sounded amused, but my own voice cracked. That was the first word Embry had spoken to me in a month, and I could tell that it wasn't going to be the only one I would get.

"I was wondering if I could talk to you, Leah."

My brain was trying to work, but it was going haywire. There was too much going on for any intelligent words to come out. I managed to look over at Seth, who smirked at both of us as if we had made his day.

"I'll take the other way home," he said, already heading for the forest where he would phase. He'd be back long home before I was, but if he got even a speck of dirt on his suit, Mom would be furious. He managed to do it every time he had to wear it.

With Seth gone, there was no one to break the tension between Embry and me. We had to do it for ourselves. I took deep breaths, willing my brain to cooperate with me. It responded by giving me back a limited power of speech.

"How have you been?" I asked. Such a standard question, and one I never should have had to ask. I always knew how Embry was. I peered into his mind each day, what he would let me into at least, and saw his moods. I hadn't realized how routine our runs were until they didn't happen anymore. After weeks of not getting the same access to his thoughts, he felt more like a stranger than my friend.

"I've been shit to tell you the truth." I let out a long exhale. It was satisfying to hear him admit to that. It made me feel better about how much of a mess I'd been. "You?"

"I've been shit too," I assured him. We smiled at each other, taking morbid joy out of our shared misery. I chanced opening up more when I said, "Not seeing you every day has felt off."

I listened to Embry's quiet intake of air when I said it. He hadn't expected me to admit that I missed him. Not even I was sure why I'd thought that I had to get it out. Maybe Mom's words had gotten to me, or maybe the distance had had the same effect of me wanting to get everything out before I lost him again.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "That was shitty. Like, really shitty. I regret it."

I'd wanted him to say something like that, to take responsibility for not showing up for our runs. And that was his fault. I was the one running at the same time as always, waiting for him to come back. But hearing him own up to it didn't feel as satisfying as I had thought it would be before. I was glad that we were getting past it. I didn't feel vindicated that Embry had taken the blame. I just wanted it to be over.

"I'll be in the woods tomorrow," he continued. "Same time as always, or what it used to always be. Whatever. Point is, I'll run to school with you like I used to."

My heart tightened as he said "like I used to." Just having to use that phrase to describe it hurt more than I would have liked to admit. I nodded, fighting down the phlegm threatening to block up my throat.

"I'd appreciate that," I told him.

We settled into silence after that. What more was there to say? Actually, there was plenty, but all of it was too heavy for me to admit. It would make things worse instead of better. I couldn't handle that. We were better off letting ourselves have some time before we dove deeper.

Embry seemed to think the same thing until we reached my house. Seth had to be home by now. Light shone through the living room window, and I could imagine him in there with Mom and Charlie. Then Embry decided to lay the confessions on me.

"You're my best friend, Leah." He said it to me carefully, watching my reaction. I sucked in a breath as I stared up at him in surprise. The sentiment itself wasn't shocking. I'd thought of Embry as my best friend for ages, but we'd never admitted as much to each other. It felt unreal that he would say it after what had transpired between us. "Before anything else," he continued. "You'll always be my best friend before anything else. Whatever that's worth."

He trailed off, looking down at the ground. He was embarrassed to have said it because he thought I would judge him. Instead, I felt emboldened. I stepped forward and reached out to squeeze Embry's hand in my own.

"That's worth a lot," I whispered. "Thank you."

He looked back up at me with a gentle smile on his face. "You're welcome."

I smiled at him for a second longer before I dropped his hand and turned back to the front door, tossing one last grin over my shoulder before I went inside.

 **A/N: I plan to post two more chapters this weekend, and I'm going to go ahead and say that here so that I have to be held accountable. It will happen. There are possibly other things I should be saying in this author's note, but to be honest, I have one of the two most important tests of my college career later today, so it's a miracle I've managed to post this as it is. Time to go nervously pace some more and try to remember everything I've learned as a college student.**


	5. May

**A/N: I want to thank Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading this chapter and also the last (because I forgot, just like I knew I was forgetting to say something).**

 **For anyone interested, I also posted the first chapter of It's Okay to Say the Word yesterday. For anyone interested in Seth's story in this series, you should check it out. Seth's the main character, and it follows him over the course of all three of Leah's stories. I'll be posting it alongside this story, and you're going to notice a slight lack of Seth in this story in comparison to the last two as a way to avoid giving away the ending of that one.**

 **This is a shorter chapter and could possibly be considered filler, although I think part of it is important. I hope you enjoy it just the same. (Oh, and since I mentioned it in the last author note, I passed my first licensing exam! Just one more to go.)**

Chapter 5

 **May 15th, 2009**

Three weeks. I had less than three weeks before I was a college graduate. I'd have my associate's degree and move on with my life. Become a real adult or something like that. The idea of it was unbelievable. Somedays, I still had trouble believing that I'd made the move to go to college, let alone that I had succeeded in making it this far.

I was nearly overwhelmed with work. I was feeling the pressure to go out with a bang as far as my grades were concerned, which meant spending what felt like endless hours bending over books and computer screens.

The saving grace to my sanity was Embry. Having him as a friend again was the only thing keeping me from struggling in the deep end. I had little time to do anything but work on projects, but he was nearly as busy preparing for his finals. We'd taken to studying with each other each evening.

The strangest part was that I was spending more time with him now than I ever had in the past. Something about our whispered confessions had made it easier for me to reveal how often I wanted him around. Of course, I was also terrified that things would backfire because of that kiss. For more than a week, I was on edge waiting for things to boil over, but they never did. Embry acted like the kiss had never happened, and I tried to follow his lead.

That was difficult when I was constantly in his presence and had such an overwhelming memory of what that kiss had felt like. I hated myself for how badly I wanted the experience a second time. I couldn't have it, and the sooner I got over it, the better off we both were.

My pen dug too forcefully into the paper, leaving a small tear. Embry chuckled next to me. He thought the frustration was from studying. In reality, I had zoned out to think about him for the last ten minutes. I couldn't remember what the page in front of me said anymore. Damn Embry and damn his amusement. I growled in frustration, causing Embry's laughs to become louder.

"Shut the fuck up."

Embry smirked at me from his spot in the armchair across from mine. "This is my house," he pointed out. "If you're annoyed, you can always go to yours."

He didn't want me to do that, and we both knew it.

"Your mom will be home soon, and we both know she likes me more than you."

Embry tried to frown, but I could see amusement in his eyes. The statement was almost true. It was the weirdest thing. I'd never gotten why Tiffany Call had the fondness for me that she did, but it had become more pronounced recently. I'd have thought that she knew everything that had happened between me and Embry, but she couldn't. I'd know if Embry had told her, and I doubted she'd be as fond of me if she knew I'd run away from her son.

I must have zoned out again because, the next thing I knew, a small wad of paper hit me in the face.

I let out a few choice words, causing Embry to laugh again. I tossed the paper back, but Embry dodged it, having the advantage of seeing it coming. Neither one of us made a move to pick it up from the floor.

"Whatcha doin'?" Embry asked. His gaze was intense. It had always been that way, but these days it felt even more so. I couldn't figure out if it really was or if it was all in my head.

"Studying. The same thing I've been doing for weeks."

"Studying what?"

I rolled my eyes. Why was Embry choosing to act like an impatient five-year-old?

"Business ethics." Something I felt was more common sense than anything else, but clearly I was wrong if it was a required course. Going into it, I had expected an easy class, but it had proven far more difficult than I had anticipated.

"Sounds boring," Embry said.

I nodded in agreement. "What are you studying?" I asked. If he was going to keep distracting me, I might as well ask.

"Calculus." I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing at the disgust in Embry's voice.

"You have it hard then," I assured him. "Worse than me."

Embry nodded along, shoving the books off his lap and not flinching when they slammed onto the ground. I looked at the mess he had created. I was pretty sure that now crumpled piece of paper was his homework.

"I can't do any more of it tonight," Embry said. "I've reached my limit."

With a sigh, I closed my own book. I was usually the first one to reach this point, and Embry would stop his own studying to talk to me while my brain got a break. Or at least a change from overworking itself on business stuff to overworking itself on Embry stuff.

We were quiet for a moment. I knew Embry would be the one to break the silence. He was nine times out of ten. I watched his face. He had his pensive look on, the one that showed that he was thinking about what to say. All I had to do was give it a moment.

Sure enough, Embry spoke after several moments. "What have you thought about the future so far?"

That wasn't a question I was expecting. Embry never questioned me about the future. Mostly because I didn't respond well to it. The future loomed over me like a dark cloud that I tried to ignore, always threatening to start pouring. Embry was asking me to challenge it, to stop analyzing when the rain would start.

"I try to stay as far away from those thoughts as possible."

Embry scowled as he concentrated on the coffee table. I knew I'd gotten him thinking, which could only be a bad thing in this case.

"You graduate in a couple of weeks."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." I was tempted to stand up just so I could shove him. "It's not like I hadn't noticed what with everything I have going on and all."

He rolled his eyes at me but otherwise didn't respond at first. After a pause, he said, "You have to figure something out. Even if it's just staying in La Push, not getting a job, and living with your mom and Charlie forever. You still have to make some sort of decision, right?"

I sunk down in my seat, trying to hide from the misery that Embry was forcing onto me. He was right. I had to do something after college. There were student loans to pay off for one thing, so I had to get some sort of job, whether it involved my degree or not. I didn't have another option, and I knew that. It wasn't that I was too lazy to search for a job; it was that doing so terrified me. It solidified that I was being pushed out of what had become my comfort zone. It made things feel real.

It was ridiculous. After graduating high school, all the guys but Embry had gotten jobs. They were, for all intents and purposes, real adults. Whatever that meant. They supported themselves, even if Jake and Quil were still living with their parents. Kim had her apprenticeship, and while Emily may not have been employed in the traditional sense, being a mom to two kids was enough to solidify her adult status.

Despite being twenty-three years old, I didn't feel like I had that yet. I was still just a student. But it wouldn't stay that way much longer. While I should have felt happy that I'd achieved what I'd been working for and that I could move on with my life, I was nothing but scared.

It didn't help that I felt like a contradiction. In the past, I had been more than ready to finish college and move on with my life. But now that I was going to be able to, it was too daunting to handle.

"I do, I guess," I told Embry.

He was giving me his thinking look directly now, staring me down while he thought about me and my situation. I'd seen him get punched by some of the guys for doing this exact thing to them, and a small part of me was tempted to do it too. I squirmed, hoping he'd look away. I didn't have any biting comebacks to use on him.

"I could help you," he said finally. "Look for a job. If you want."

Did I want that? Honestly, I didn't want to think about jobs, let alone ask for someone's help with finding one. Something told me Embry would be more efficient at the task than I would. But maybe job searching, of all things, was something I should do on my own if I was keen to be a "real" adult. I sighed. I had no idea what I was doing, and it showed.

I spoke slowly. "I guess that would be okay. I don't know where to start looking."

Embry shrugged. He didn't appear worried, but then again, this wasn't his future we were discussing. When Embry did graduate, he knew exactly what it was that he wanted to do.

"We'll figure it out," he said. "I'll let you know if I can find anything about jobs you might like."

I wanted to tell him to just tell me about any jobs he happened to find. Period. Holding out for something I would like felt like a fantasy, something not bound to happen within the next decade. Because I had no idea what a job like that would look like.

Instead, I said, "Thanks."

I opened my textbook back up, wanting this conversation to be over. I had enough terrifying thoughts of the future to last me for the year. Embry took the hint, leaning over to pick his own things up off the floor. He didn't mention anything about my future or potential jobs for the rest of the night.

 **May 24th, 2009**

I fiddled with the hem of my shirt as I stood on the porch, chewing on the inside of my cheek. Embry had told me he wouldn't be home until around three, but apparently, 'around three' meant sometime much later than three.

Tiffany was moving around inside the house, not aware that I was standing out on her doorstep. I took a deep breath as I raised my hand to knock on the door. Inside, I was glad I'd managed to do it instead of leaving. Even though I'd been inside this house many times while Tiffany was there, Embry had always been with me. The woman was kind, but intruding when Embry wasn't home to act as a buffer felt intimidating. The way the woman liked me a bit too much had me on guard.

There was something wrong about it. I couldn't shake the feeling that she had an ulterior motive that I didn't know about. It made it difficult for me to trust her.

Tiffany Call pulled open the door, smiling as soon as she saw it was me. I smiled nervously back, sending her a halfhearted wave.

"Leah! How nice to see you?" And she meant it in a genuine way most people didn't when giving the obligatory greeting.

"Hi," I told her, trying to sound happy to see her. The truth was, despite my intimidation, I liked Tiffany Call. I'd come to like her even more after the Joshua Uley fiasco when I'd learned more about her story than I had known previously. She was tough. That much was obvious from what she had been through, and I admired that about her. I was in awe of how cheerful she managed to be after the shit she'd been put through, not that I'd ever let on.

"I'm supposed to meet Embry," I continued. "He said he'd be here around three, but I guess he's not back yet."

Tiffany grinned. "Not yet, but I'm sure he will be soon. Go ahead and come in. You can keep me company while you wait."

The very thing I had been dreading. My heart pounded as I took a seat on the couch. I went back to fiddling with the hem of my shirt and biting the inside of my cheek. It was the only way I knew of to try and release some of the tension I felt throughout my body.

"How is school?" Tiffany asked as she took a seat in the armchair nearest to where I sat.

It figured she would ask that first. That was the customary question people had asked me for the past two years. It was frustrating when those three words brought up so much anxiety.

"Good," I lied. No, I wouldn't say it was a lie. School itself _was_ fine. It was the looming doom that would come after school that made everything else feel darker than it was in reality. Not that I was going to share that with Tiffany Call. Dumping such heavy emotions on her would be one way to make her smile around me less often.

"Your graduation is in a week, right?" she asked with curiosity.

The thing was, Embry looked just like his mom in almost every way. You could tell that they were mother and son the second you saw them both. But Embry hadn't gotten his ability to read people and their emotions from her. Since I doubted he'd gotten it from Joshua Uley, I didn't know where the talent had come from, but Tiffany Call didn't have it.

"A little more than a week."

I wasn't sure why I felt the need to correct her. She'd been close enough to right. Who cared about the exact distance? Her smile became hesitant at the tone of my voice, and I tried to smile to assure her that it was fine. It didn't work. Slowly but surely, she was going to start realizing that I wasn't as great as she thought I was. It was like waiting for the house to come crashing down around us.

We fell into a silence. I had nothing to say, and apparently, she didn't either or she figured getting me to respond would be a struggle. If it was the latter, then she was right.

What did you talk about with your best friend's mom? As far as I knew, we had little in common other than our terrible experiences that gave us every right to never trust love again, which I couldn't bring up without looking like a bitch. Actually, I felt bad that Tiffany's experience with Joshua and that she was Embry's mother were essentially the only things I knew about her. There had never been a time to learn anything else, and why would I have bothered? She was always just another adult, not someone I was concerned about getting to know.

"You've been coming over more often," Tiffany said, startling me out of my thoughts.

If I had expected her to speak again, that wasn't what I had expected her to say. It was an easily observable fact. I wasn't sure why she was commenting on it. Did she not want me around as much? Was she trying to ease into asking me to stop coming over as often?

"I guess so."

Her smile helped calm my fear of being shooed away.

"It's nice having someone else around," she admitted. "I know Quil and Jake have real, grown-up jobs now, but they used to be here almost every day. If Embry was home, it was only because those two were here with him. Otherwise, they were off somewhere else together. They became less dependent on each other when they were teenagers. That one year—Embry was fifteen I think—I didn't see either one of them for a while. I was so relieved when they started showing up again. I'd thought something had happened between them."

I shifted in my seat, avoiding eye contact. Sometimes I managed to forget that Tiffany Call didn't know that her only child turned into a wolf. It was the closest she had come to sharing with me her previous worries about Embry's behavior. Most of what I knew about it had come from Embry himself. I'd never heard her perspective.

"I understand," Tiffany continued. "You don't have all the time in the world to spend with friends anymore once you start working. And when Embry does spend time with them, it's not here. He never seems to be at home anymore. It's nice to see him and to see you too, Leah."

There was a warmth inside of me that I hated. I hardly spoke to Tiffany Call when I was here. How could it be nice for her? That was ridiculous.

And how was I supposed to respond? By getting sappy? No, thank you. Instead, I offered her a strained smile and nodded, although I had no idea what I was agreeing to. At least I had some hint about why Tiffany Call liked me so much: I made Embry come around more often. That still didn't explain all of it, I didn't think, but at least it helped some of it make sense. I suppose we made her less lonely. Even though Tiffany Call had never appeared lonely to me.

After staring down at my hands for several minutes, I was surprised when I next looked up and saw Tiffany Call laughing silently to herself. I didn't speak, but I shot her a questioning look, too afraid to question what it was she found funny about me.

"It's nothing, nothing," she lied, waving off my concern. But she didn't try to pull it off as the truth. "I was thinking about you and Embry."

My heart stopped as I thought about how to respond. "What about me and Embry?"

"You get flustered whenever I mention him." I could feel my face heating up, and I went back to staring at my hands. Coming inside had turned out to be a terrible idea. I would have been better off outside. Where the fuck was Embry? It was way past three. He had fucking lied.

"I'm sorry for embarrassing you," Tiffany continued. She did sound sorry, but not enough to drop the subject. "It's just that my son always seems…brighter, I guess I could say, around you. And I don't know you well, Leah, but I think he does the same for you. It's nice to see that. Nice to see you make each other happy."

My embarrassment had been replaced with nothing but shock. I stared at Tiffany in open disbelief as she continued smiling at me.

"I was hoping you would when I learned that Embry was spending time with you. In a way, this is always something I thought would happen." My eyebrows shot up, causing her smile to widen. "I remember when you were little, Leah, and played with Embry at the store. I remember the two of you together. I wasn't sitting around planning your wedding, but I can't say I'm surprised with how you two are these days. Even back then, I thought there was something about the two of you together. Mind you, I don't mean that in a romantic sense necessarily. I'm not trying to imply anything like that. As long as you're both happy, then I'm happy. That's what's important."

As if she knew I needed time to digest what she had thrown at me, she got up to take her empty glass into the kitchen. I continued to stare at the chair she had been using, trying to take in everything she had said.

Of all the times for Embry to decide that it was "around three," he chose now. He came through the door, startling me in my panic. I looked at him with wide eyes, and his brow knitted together in confusion.

"Hey." His voice went up at the end, making the greeting sound like a question. "You're already here."

"You said around three," I pointed out. I tried to school my features to appear nonchalant. "Your mom let me in."

He nodded, pushing the door closed and stepping inside. I could hear Tiffany moving around in the kitchen, clinking together what sounded like glasses. Embry took his mother's former place beside me. My face started to feel hot, and I willed it to stop.

After a moment of silence, I leaned over to slap Embry lightly on the arm.

"Ow!" he exclaimed exaggeratedly. "What was that for?"

"You said 'around three'," I said, mimicking him when he had said those very words to me.

"Blame Jake," Embry grumbled, although I detected a hint of a grin. "It was his fault."

"Of course it was," I muttered under my breath. Hopefully, my urge to chew Jake out would dissipate before I saw him again. Otherwise, he would be getting an earful.

I sighed as I leaned back in the chair. I already felt more comfortable in this house now that Embry was here.

"So," Embry began. "What did you guys talk about before I got here?"

For a split second, I debated what I was going to say, but there was only one option.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Yeah, basically nothing."

If Embry didn't believe me, he didn't question it. Irritatingly reminding me of one of the reasons I liked him so much.


	6. June

**A/N: Super short chapter today, but since it's Leah's graduation, it's an important one I think. As always, thanks to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading. You'll be getting the next chapter sometime in the next week, but if you're reading Seth's story, then you'll be getting a new chapter sooner.**

Chapter 6

 **June 6th, 2009**

I hadn't gotten out of bed. My graduation ceremony was in five hours, and I hadn't gotten out of bed.

Why had I decided that hanging the robe on the back of my closet door was a good idea? I wouldn't have forgotten where it was if I'd just stuck it in the closet. Now it was in my eye line as I lay in bed, staring at me. The blackness of the gown should have blended into the night, but my eyesight was too strong to fall for such tricks. I'd been catching glimpses of it all night as I tried to sleep.

I'd given up trying when I began to hear Mom and Charlie moving around the house. That was the sign I needed to know I could pretend to have gotten a good night's sleep if anyone were to find me awake.

Mom had looked happy last night. She hadn't mentioned the graduation because, every time someone did, I changed the subject as quickly as possible, but I could tell today excited her. At least that was someone. I felt like vomiting.

The house sounded quieter once Mom and Charlie were both downstairs. I could still hear them moving around, but it was muted. Seth was snoring in his room, and I envied him more than I ever had before. I would have given anything to have been able to close my eyes and find sleep again, but I was running out of time to sit here. Soon I would have no choice but to get up and get dressed.

I had a dress hanging beside the robe and a pair of shoes lying on the floor. I'd anticipated having a morning like this and had tried to be prepared to offset my reluctance to get dressed.

I wouldn't even have to put the robe on as soon as I got up. That would come later in Port Angeles. For now, it was only the dress, yet it was the robe that kept catching my eye and scaring me away from getting off the bed.

The clock switched, showing the passing of another minute. With a sigh, I closed my eyes, willing myself to stand up, and stand up I did. My legs felt wobbly as they supported my weight after hours of not doing so. I had to take another deep breath once I was standing before I crossed the distance to the closet door.

I tried not to think too much as I stripped down, pulled the dress off the hanger, and slipped it over my head. There. It was on. That hadn't been difficult. I left the shoes. I could come back to them later.

Looking around, I tried to decide what I should do next. On a normal day, I would have gotten breakfast before I even got dressed, but it felt easier to get this part out of the way first today. The problem was, I couldn't remember what I needed to do before I was considered 'ready'. My makeup was laying out on the top of my dresser and was an easy enough place to start. But what did I want to do with it today? A large part of me didn't feel like I could be bothered with it at all.

But I picked up some foundation anyway, quickly applying it over my face. I went through the motions of putting on some of the makeup, but I didn't bother with anything that would stand out. The basics were enough.

With that done, I looked back at the robe and then at the clock. I had an hour until we would be leaving for Port Angeles. Seth was still snoring, but he'd be up minutes before we were set to leave and still get out the door on time.

I should have been going down to eat breakfast. Making myself sick from not eating wouldn't make the graduation ceremony any easier, but I wasn't fond of trying to stomach something and making myself sick now either. As far as I could tell, that would be the only outcome from trying to eat this morning.

Going downstairs and seeing Mom meant that she would try to get me to eat something, and if I didn't, she would get stern and insist I did anyway. So I stayed in my room for a while longer, waiting until it was close enough to the time to leave that she wouldn't have time to force food on me.

Seth was awake when I got downstairs, scarfing down food before he was forced out the door. I avoided the kitchen, not able to stand the smell of the toast Seth was eating that wafted into the living room. Mom smiled at me from where she was perched on the couch, and I struggled to return it, looking away before I could see her looking worried.

We piled into the car. Seth was going on about wishing some of the guys were coming to keep him company. It was going to be a long day, and he was sure to get bored. Mom had already been trying to get me to invite the rest of the pack and the imprints since talk about inviting people had first come up. I'd refused.

They all knew what today was, but I had stayed as quiet about it as possible. Not even Embry was coming, and he was the only one who had argued with me over it. I'd staunchly stuck to my position of only bringing my family. Charlie was lucky he was coming. I didn't want Mom and Seth there. I didn't want the ceremony at all. I didn't like the attention that was going to be on me today, even if it was shared with a ton of other graduates. There was no need to bring more people along to see it, and bringing a huge chunk of the packs out together in public... They would do nothing but draw attention to themselves. It was a terrible idea.

Part of me felt bad for lumping Embry in with the others. If I would have invited anyone, it would have been him. I kind of felt like I should have. Joselyn too since she'd been such a large part of my college experience, but neither one of them was coming. I'd convinced myself that it was easier that way. I'd go and get this over with. No need to make it a bigger deal than it needed to be.

I stayed quiet for the entirety of the car ride. Seth took it upon himself to provide the car with a steady stream of noise, chattering on beside me in the back while the rest of us listened or stared out the window. If he noticed any disinterest on our parts, he didn't show it.

When we got to the school, I had to leave my family behind. It was a relief. Away from them, I felt less pressure to act like I wasn't freaking out. But neither Joselyn nor Embry were graduating with me. Joselyn still had two years of an undergraduate degree and Embry had three. I was on my own here. It was incredibly apparent how detached I had remained from the school at large while I was here. That didn't bother me as much as I would have thought. Being here had solidified two close friendships for me. I was satisfied with that, even if I looked odd standing alone while everyone else congregated into packs. I'd never see any of these people again.

Waiting for the ceremony to start was monotonous; sitting through it was worse. The robe was hot against my skin, and I was a wolf, used to high temperatures. I could see the other graduates around me sweating. Despite how big the space was, it smelled in here. I wasn't sure if the humans could pick up on it or not. They had to feel the oppressiveness in the air that came from our collective body heat.

When it came time to call us each by name and hand us our diplomas, I was more than ready. My name coming so early in the alphabet was a blessing, and I hurried through the required motions. I was excited enough to be up and moving that there wasn't time to think about the significance of the motions or how many people were watching me as I walked across the stage.

Then it was over. I was back in my seat, having to wait for the millions of students after me to complete the same ritual. By the time we were done, I found myself wishing for the hot June air outside. It would feel amazing compared to this.

Thankful for my wolf senses, I wound my way through the crowd and to my family easily. Mom and Seth both smiled widely at me; Charlie looked stoic. Sometimes I forgot how much I actually liked Charlie. I could appreciate someone who wasn't into large displays of emotion. It was a great characteristic to find in someone.

"Congratulations," Mom told me, pulling me into a hug. I went reluctantly, but the smile on my face was more genuine than it had been earlier in the day. I was just thankful that it was over. That was enough to put anyone in a fantastic mood. I felt a little like walking on clouds. I had a diploma clutched in my hand. My studying days were over. That was all great.

I could forget about the ominous future. For today.

Seth hugged me next. He wasn't beaming as much as Mom, but his smile was large and genuine. I could have done without the attention, although it was bothering me less than it had that morning. The worst of it was over.

Well, the worst of it that had to come today. Everything else I was saving for tomorrow. I could forget that now and focus on the fact I had earned a diploma. I could disconnect that from everything else.

But tomorrow, I was going to have to face reality and figure out how to become an adult.


	7. July

**A/N: Once again, huge thank you to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading.**

Chapter 7

 **July 5th, 2009**

Sometimes it was easy to convince myself that I was only on summer vacation, that school would start again come September and I'd be back. Then I would look at all the job ads, and reality would sink in again.

Despite Embry's constant reassurances that we would find something that excited me soon, I had no such hopes. All I wanted was something that would pay, and I'd prefer if it required my degree so I could feel like I'd actually accomplished something. I wasn't finding many opportunities for that. Holding out for a job I truly wanted was a fairytale.

I thought that, maybe, it could happen when I was middle-aged and had been searching for where I belonged or whatever for decades, but I wasn't going to find it right out of college. The longer I tried to think about what that job would look like, the more I was convinced that it didn't exist.

Somedays it was hard to believe that jobs even existed with how hard it was for me to find openings. I'd been interviewed twice so far, and that felt like nothing with how hard I'd been working. Truthfully, I should have been doing this before I'd graduated, but that would have required facing this earlier than necessary. I couldn't believe I was facing it now.

There were some days where I maniacally searched through job postings. That was when I felt the most desperate. At times, I thought I'd be willing to take something that paid, like, three dollars an hour if it meant I could end this witch hunt, but Embry always calmed me down.

At first, he had been adamant that we should search for something I enjoyed, but even he had realized that was an ideal and nothing more by now. Aside from the limited options, nothing would have been an ideal.

The worst part was that I knew this could last a long time. I'd only been at it a month and felt like I was at my wit's end. If I had been religious, I would have been praying for this to end, but I wasn't sure it would.

 **July 30th, 2009**

It was a fluke that I was on patrol when Ethan phased. A complete fluke.

I was minding my own business while running around and sniffing for something suspicious, and suddenly there was a howl that had to be coming from a wolf in Sam's pack. It took several moments for me to recognize it as Ethan.

But without a pack connection, I was clueless about the reason for it.

Embry's thoughts were suddenly louder in my head. Our patrol so far had largely consisted of me thinking about nonsense while Embry's mind stayed quiet. Suddenly, he had a lot to say as we speculated about what was happening.

After a few minutes, Jake phased along with most of the guys in our pack. You didn't just hear that sort of racket and ignore it. This was different than the howls we used to alert each other to vampires. There was a different sense of urgency to it. Something was wrong with Ethan.

 _What the hell?_ Quil asked, sounding anxious. It wasn't often he expressed fear, so I knew the way my own heart was beating was justified.

 _It's Ethan,_ Jake informed us unnecessarily. _Something's happened, but Sam's being stingy on the details._ So Sam was phased and communicating with Jake. He was the only way any of us were going to find out what was going on anytime soon. _He wants us all at his house. He's going to try to calm Ethan down enough for him to phase back. Then we can talk._

It didn't sound like Ethan was physically hurt. If he was, there would have been a greater sense of urgency, and they wouldn't be talking about going to Sam's to talk. I tried to let that knowledge calm my racing heart. Whatever it was, surely it couldn't be that bad.

The atmosphere was eerie when I did finally get to Sam's. I had been on the opposite side of La Push while patrolling, so I was one of the last to make it. I squeezed myself in between Embry and Seth on the couch, the only wolf who would be able to fit in such a small space. Everyone was watching Ethan, who was hunched over in a chair with more space around him than anyone else had.

He certainly looked like he was in pain, although I couldn't detect any injuries. He was upset about something. Very upset. I glanced around at the other members of his pack to see if they would give something away, but they didn't. They looked as confused as our pack. Like there was something they didn't quite get.

"Ethan," Sam said. I could tell that he was trying his best to sound authoritative but also not too pushy, considering Ethan's state. It wasn't working too well for him. Ethan looked up at him slowly, an expression of distaste on his face. I couldn't tell if it was directed at Sam or something else. "Are you going to tell everyone what happened?"

Ethan made it clear from one look alone that he didn't want to explain. Collin leaned over and gave him a friendly shove, hoping it would cheer him up. It was the first time I'd seen anyone touch him since I came in, and he recoiled. Collin pulled back, looking hurt by the rejection.

It was quiet for a long time. The only sounds were the occasional person shifting around in discomfort. The tension got thicker and thicker as the clock ticked by, and I took to zoning out, trying to remove myself from the negative energy emanating off Ethan and filling the room.

"I imprinted," Ethan finally said. His voice was grim, without a trace of happiness.

No one said anything, although a few of the guys in our pack traded surprised looks. There had been less than stellar reactions from some of the other guys immediately after imprinting, but no one had looked as messed up about it as Ethan did. Without any personal experience, all I had was the other guys' thoughts to go on, but it seemed to me that the strong re-wiring of Ethan's brain should have been enough to counteract any negative feelings toward his imprint.

"Look." Sam spoke again, trying his best to sound upbeat. "I know it's a shock right now, but it will be fine in the end. You're meant to be with her."

Ethan started frantically shaking his head. It was the most he had moved since I'd arrived at the house.

"I don't want this," he complained. "I didn't think it would happen, so I didn't worry, but I don't want this. I don't."

His voice cracked, and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. Tears were fighting to be released. I could feel Seth shift beside me from his own uneasiness at watching this. Ethan was one of the wolves closest to Seth in age, and they'd always spent a fair amount of time together because of it.

All the guys avoided looking at Ethan. I turned to stare at the floor instead, giving him some of the privacy he needed.

Something about this wasn't okay. There was more going on here than just a dissatisfaction with whoever this girl was, but Ethan didn't look prepared to give us any details. And no one wanted to be the one to push him off the edge when he was already close to falling.

"Ethan," Sam said, voice resigned to the fact that he wasn't going to make any progress, "why don't you go home and rest? I'll debrief everyone else, okay?" Ethan nodded jerkily, although he didn't seem happy to know that we would get the story. "Do you want one of the guys to take you? Maybe Collin?"

Collin was already poised to stand, but Ethan shook his head. Collin deflated again and leaned back into the couch with a frown. Brady dinged him on the shoulder in a small show of comfort. Both of them looked disturbed that their friend wasn't allowing them to do anything to help.

Ethan stared at the floor as he wound his way through the maze we created within the room. The door fell quietly shut behind him. I had expected a slam, but maybe Ethan was too despondent for that.

Even once he was gone, the room was deadly silent. I thought some of the guys were scared, particularly the ones with imprints. Imprinting was supposed to be a happy thing. That had always been considered a given. Sure, a ton of shit almost always came along with it: Sam had been plagued with guilt. Quil had been terrified over what it meant to imprint on a two-year-old. Jake… Well, that shit had been a mess all around.

But despite all of that, I don't think any of them had doubted that their imprint was supposed to happen. I could tell from the memories they had shown me that they had always known in some capacity that it was happening for a reason and that things would turn out fine in the end.

Ethan hadn't shown any of that. There hadn't been so much as an ounce of hope, and that scared everyone. It was unprecedented, and on top of that, no one had suspected that Ethan would have such an adverse reaction to imprinting in the first place. He'd never talked about it. I thought back to any possible times he could have said something, but I had nothing. I could think of plenty of things he'd said about girls over the years, but imprinting had never been part of the conversation. It had to be what was wrong, but I still couldn't figure it out. Did he hate imprinting? He'd never complained about it.

Sam cleared his throat, and each of our gazes snapped to him. He looked like he was struggling with what to say, which was a first.

"So, Ethan imprinted."

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn't find the motivation to make a snappy comeback. Sam had been thrown off his usual game of being calm and in control. That was another sign that something was wrong, something that it didn't feel right to joke about. The other guys felt it too because no one said anything as they waited for Sam to continue.

"He, uh..." Sam sighed before he continued with better composure. "We kind of saw his mind when he was phased. Jared and I saw the most. He—Apparently, he's angry because he never thought he'd imprint."

Quil spoke up, sounding nervous. "None of us thought so, did we? I know I didn't. We all just assumed it wouldn't apply to us until it did. Still, we didn't act like that."

"He kept thinking about kids," Jared said. "His thoughts were a huge mess, but I got enough of it to get that. Kids and this really negative feeling. It was enough to put together what the problem is."

We heard Brady take a deep intake of breath. His eyes flickered in the direction of Collin, who nodded in encouragement. Brady looked out at us and spoke. "Ethan's never wanted kids. Actually, he's really, really against it. Swears he'll never have any."

"But he never talked much about imprinting," Collin continued, taking over for Brady. "He never said anything bad about it or anything like that, so we were just as surprised as you guys about this. I don't get what's going on."

It went quiet again. Sam had faded into the group now, no longer standing among us as if he were the one conducting the conversation. We were all in the same state of wonderment and confusion. There was no way to make sense of this now that Ethan was gone.

Collin and Brady left first under the pretense of going to check on Ethan. They waved off Sam's insistence that they be careful and not push Ethan if he didn't want to talk. Before they left, they tugged Seth along with them, and the three of them disappeared into the woods in the direction of Ethan's house.

Embry got up to leave not long after that, and I rushed to stand up too. I didn't like sitting in this room and stewing in silence. Nothing was going to come of it. Breathing would be easier once I was outside.

No one said anything as I followed Embry outside. Embry walked along the drive until we came to the road, walking down it in the direction of both of our houses. It took a long time before he acknowledged that I was walking along with him.

"I wish I'd known," he said.

I looked at him in surprise. "About Ethan? Why? What difference would it have made?"

Embry shrugged, frowning down at the ground.

"It wouldn't have made any difference, but it is interesting, isn't it? None of the other guys has ever said anything about not wanting kids. I've kind of just assumed that they did. Then the one that doesn't goes and imprints. All the guys in there were acting confused as if they can't remember all the times they talked about imprinting as if it were only about reproducing. Why wouldn't Ethan be angry?"

"I hadn't thought about it," I admitted. There was bitterness in my voice. I should have thought about it. Embry had shoved the idea onto me more times than I cared to remember. "I guess you're right, but I still don't get why that would make him mad. If he doesn't want kids, then the imprint can't force it on him even if that's what imprinting is supposed to be."

Embry shrugged. "Who knows? No one. It'll pull him towards her, and he'll want to please her however he can. If she wants kids… Well, he'll have a hard time denying her, won't he? It could be impossible. We really don't know."

Embry's words made it easier for me to imagine a future where Ethan was with some faceless girl I had yet to meet. That was the first time I realized that I knew nothing about her. Not what her name was, not what she looked like, not how Ethan had managed to see her. It was all a mystery, yet her existence had led to both packs feeling floored.

Ethan probably hadn't even explained to her what had happened yet. Had they spoken to each other? Would he speak to her, or would he fight against it?

"This could be significant," Embry said, a sense of urgency in his voice. "Ethan's imprint could change how everyone views imprinting. If he doesn't have kids…"

I knocked into Embry's side as we walked. "Embry, maybe don't use Ethan as an experiment. It might not be a good idea."

"It's more a case study than an experiment," he mumbled. "But it's not like I'm going to say anything to him or anyone else. Just you." Those words made my breath catch in my throat, and I struggled to appear unaffected at the thought of this being something only between the two of us.

"Right," I said once I could trust my voice. "It's just another one of your observational opportunities or whatever you call them."

"I'd call it life."

"Right. Whatever. You do realize it'll take years before we see the ramifications of this, right? Ethan's fifteen. It'll be decades before anyone can say that he won't have kids without any doubt. Don't get me wrong. I get that he's convinced. He obviously is, and I don't think he'll ever want them. But you can't treat it like a fact until the opportunity has passed and there's still no kid."

"I know, but I think his word should be good enough."

"I don't know. If imprinting is dead set on making a shit ton of wolves, then it isn't going to take one wolf's feelings into consideration before making him imprint, right? It would just make it happen anyway. There's nothing to prove that what's happening to Ethan involves what he wants. Even if Ethan doesn't have kids with his imprint, how would we know that's not why the imprint happened in the first place? Maybe they'll resist fate and not have kids, but he still imprinted because the universe wanted them to have kids. I'd like that actually. Ethan getting one up on the universe."

"I hadn't thought about that," Embry admitted. "I just assumed that if imprinting was about babies then it would make sure babies happened. I never thought anyone would be able to resist it."

"There has to be a possibility of that though. I have to believe that. Not even imprinting can magically poof a baby into a uterus."

"Yeah, but how likely is it that an imprint couple would be able to stay abstinent their entire lives? With that pull they feel? They'd snap eventually."

"You can have sex and not have a kid, Embry."

He rolled his eyes at me. "Can you?" he replied sarcastically. "I'm saying if imprinting really wants it to happen, it will make it happen."

"We still don't know if imprinting has that much control." I sped up my steps to get in front of Embry and then turned around to face him as I walked backwards. "Once again, all we have is speculation." I spun back around and kept walking, listening to Embry's footsteps behind me.

That was all I heard for a long time until Embry said, "You know, a lot of things are speculation if you stop to think about it. Hell, most marriages are based more on speculation than imprint marriages are. You never know how a marriage will turn out."

I shrugged, not glancing back at him. "I wouldn't disagree. But we're not speculating about whether marriages will work out. And why aren't we?" I asked rhetorically. "Because that's pointless."

Embry stepped up to walk beside me again. "A lot of the time you suspect the way the marriage will go, right? There are always those couples that you just know won't work out in the end. You can't know for sure, but you can guess pretty well sometimes."

"When it comes to the most doomed of relationships, yeah, but it's harder than that most of the time."

I didn't know if I was talking about imprinting anymore, and Embry sensed it too. His steps slowed down, and mine naturally mimicked his. I stayed quiet, waiting for him to answer on his own.

"I still think you can guess pretty well," he said. "You won't always be right, but you can guess."

"Even if you're in the couple? You don't think people get blinded to what should be obvious signs of doom because they get too wrapped up in fleeting emotions?"

I knew from the way Embry watched me that he knew what I was getting at. I could also tell from his frown that he didn't like the point I was trying to make.

"I think they can sometimes," he allowed. "But I don't think that's true all the time or even most of the time."

"You don't?" I had a difficult time believing that wasn't the case.

"I don't. I think there are plenty of people who go into marriage knowing it'll work out."

"But they're not always right."

"Plenty of them are. They're sure enough. I could die every time I get in a car, Leah, but I still get in one all the goddamn time believing that I'll survive the day. I don't do that because I'm stupid. I do it because I know that I'll do my best to work towards the best possible outcome, and that's all I can do. I don't just avoid driving."

I looked down at the pavement beneath my feet. My face felt warm. "Well, when you put it that way…"

Embry did an excellent job of taking my fears and saying the right things to quell them. That was why I shouldn't have talked to him about them in the first place. He would convince me everything would go well with his stupid optimism, and then it would blow up in our faces anyway. Because shit never turned out the way optimists wanted it to. No matter what Embry thought about marriage and expectations.

Embry knocked his arm against mine, causing goosebumps to erupt on my skin.

"Even if fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, that still means as many people made it work as those who didn't."

I didn't look at him. I couldn't. Instead, I gave a short nod of my head to show that I had heard him. It was all I could manage.

"Fifty-fifty odds are not good odds," I pointed out.

"They're better than half the other odds you could get."

That shouldn't have reassured me of anything, but the way Embry said it did. He always sounded so sure of himself when he talked about stuff like this. How did he do it? How did he talk about not knowing the future while still sounding confident about the future? It shouldn't have been possible.

"Is that even how odds work?" I asked.

Embry made a face and shrugged. "I took prob and stats," he said in his defense.

I felt a small grin building on my face. "That's not what I asked."

He just shrugged again in response, walking ahead of me so I couldn't see his expression. We were reaching my own house, and we'd have to part ways soon. I could feel a longing in the pit of my stomach to not separate and to keep walking with Embry. I could go to his house and stay for a while longer. It wasn't late. Doing so would be reasonable and not unlike plenty of other times where I had done the same. It was what I would have done when our patrol had finished if it hadn't been interrupted.

But I could see the light on in Seth's window, and knowing he had gone along to Ethan's made me curious. They obviously hadn't lasted long.

I glanced up at the window and back to Embry. He was frowning up at it too, his thinking face on.

"Do you mind if I come in?" he asked suddenly.

I knew he wanted to talk to Seth like I did. I also knew that even if he had been coming in just to spend time with me, it wouldn't have been any different from normal. Yet my heart sped up for reasons of its own making, and I tried to keep myself calm as I nodded yes.

The downstairs was quiet when we entered. It was the part of the late afternoon where no direct light shone into the living room, and everything felt like it was cloaked in shadows. Mom and Charlie would both be at work. There was noise coming from Seth's room that sat right above our heads. I glanced up at the ceiling before I headed for the stairs, Embry following behind.

I made the short trip down the hallway and stopped to knock on the closed door. "Hey. It's me and Embry."

We listened to Seth stand up and cross to the door. He didn't answer us verbally, just swung the door open and turned around to flop down on his bed again. I followed him, sitting on one of the areas of the bed that wasn't occupied by Seth's flailing limbs. Embry took a seat in Seth's desk chair instead. I wasn't sure he would have fit on the bed.

After having left Sam and Emily's house to escape the dark mood, entering Seth's room and feeling the same things wasn't pleasant. Seth was moody, but for once, I didn't think the source was his own feelings. There were different characteristics to this moodiness. He was worried about Ethan, not himself.

"He that bad then?" Embry asked.

Seth was silent for a moment, shaking his head back and forth slowly. "He's that bad. Worse even."

He fell silent again for a beat of time before speaking again.

"He was kind of despondent. Hardly doing anything or reacting to anything that any of us said. His mom let us in the house, and she looked worried. You could tell she had no idea what was going on. She sent us up to his room, and she looked hopeful that we'd be able to do something about him. But we got up there, and he was laying on his bed staring at the ceiling, not moving at all. His door wasn't closed, and he didn't stop us from coming in, but then he didn't talk to us no matter what we said. Just laid there. We left eventually, told him to call someone if he needed us, but he won't. He's probably still laying there."

Chills ran down my body. Ethan was never one to get upset about things. He was one of the guys who would make a joke to distract from anything that was bothering him until everyone had forgotten about it. For something to hurt him badly enough that he went silent…

"He'll be okay," Embry said. "He has to be. All the other imprinted wolves are."

"Ethan's imprint is not all the other imprints." I was surprised at the bitterness in Seth's voice as he spoke. "Just because they turned out great, doesn't mean his will. Maybe this is shit and will always be shit. You saw him today."

Embry hesitated over confronting Seth about it but decided to speak anyway. "We saw the immediate aftermath. We don't know what will happen later."

"No one else had that reaction," Seth continued. There was anger building in his voice, which had me worried. "Jake was about to fucking kill Nessie before he imprinted, but afterwards, everything was rainbows and butterflies for him. Ethan didn't react normally. How is his imprint supposed to be normal?"

Embry shrugged. "Maybe it won't be. I'm just saying that we don't know."

Seth scoffed but didn't try to argue anymore. I didn't think they'd succeed in doing anything other than butting heads if they kept going at each other. Imprinting wasn't something Seth and I discussed. I didn't much care to discuss imprinting at all, so since Seth never brought it up to me, I never brought it up to him. I hadn't expected him to have such an adverse reaction to it though. Like Ethan, he had never complained about imprinting, but I realized that I didn't know much about what his thoughts on the topic were.

"Embry might be right."

I had no idea why I said it. I'd spent so much of the past trying to dismiss Embry's imprinting theories. Not once had I felt the need to defend them. They were much easier to dismiss as fantasy, just like all the theories that the pack had formulated. But something about seeing Seth dismiss them so easily too made me switch sides, at least for the moment. I needed him to take Embry seriously, at the very least, whether he agreed or not.

Both Seth and Embry looked at me in surprise. A grin slowly appeared on Embry's face, and I expected him to mouth 'thank you' to me before I turned away to keep myself from seeing it. Seth still looked worried and a little angry. He didn't have much of a reaction to my statement beyond his widened eyes and lifted eyebrows. He just watched me closely.

Eventually, he muttered, "He could be, I guess. We'll see."

I wasn't sure why he readily agreed with me when he had openly scoffed at Embry. Maybe he thought he was being ganged up on and there was no way to win. That hadn't been what I meant to do. I wanted both of them to be right more than I wanted them to be wrong. That was why I had such a strong reaction to Seth's dismissal of Embry's ideas.

Neither one of them spoke after that. Seth stared at his bedroom wall. Oddly enough, he probably looked like Ethan at the moment even though he had been expressing worry about his friend's state minutes ago.

I heard a wolf approaching the house before I could smell that it was Al. Glancing at Seth, I could see that he had noticed too. It was like his entire body had perked up, and he was tilting his head to better listen. Seth had always had the best hearing in the pack, and I wondered if he could recognize Al from his footsteps alone.

None of us moved to do anything until there was a sound of a knock on the front door below us.

"I'm gonna go," Seth announced, sitting up and sliding off the bed. I noticed him glance out his bedroom window as he passed, wanting to catch a glimpse of Al but trying not to get caught by Embry or me.

Once Seth was gone, I turned to look at Embry. It hadn't escaped my notice that we were now sitting in Seth's room without Seth. The door opened and closed downstairs, and we listened to Seth and Al getting farther and farther from the house. I glanced down at Seth's blue duvet beneath me as if checking that I really was in his room.

"I should go," Embry said, standing up.

I watched him for a moment. I'd been about to suggest that we leave Seth's room, but I hadn't meant for Embry to leave the house yet. The words had been on the tip of my tongue. Now I struggled to keep them tucked away. Embry walked towards the door but glanced back when he realized I wasn't moving or speaking. That was the prompt I needed to get my mind back on track.

"Yeah, sure. I guess I'll see you tomorrow?"

Even though I phrased it like a question, I knew the answer. If he were to say no, then I would be shocked. We'd seen each other virtually every day of the summer, even if it was only for a few minutes. Much more often, we saw each other for most of the day. That was why I was confused about Embry leaving suddenly when we hadn't talked much.

Without looking at a clock, I would have placed the time at somewhere in the early evening, not early enough for us to depart from each other.

"Tomorrow," Embry confirmed with a smile.

He stepped out of Seth's room. I listened to his footsteps fall heavily down the stairs. The door opened and closed softer than it had when Seth went through it minutes before.

I was still on Seth's bed. Right. I should have been getting up, but at the same time, I didn't get why staying here would be a terrible thing. I had nothing to do for the rest of the day, and I was already in the perfect position for a nap.

I could sleep and dream of scenarios that were simple and happy. There was none of this ambiguity that was going to drive me to insanity.


	8. August

**A/N: Huge thank you to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading this chapter.**

 **August 2nd, 2009**

Sundays always felt like the laziest day of the week. Maybe it came from knowing that everything would begin piling up tomorrow, so you had a vested interest in resting yourself up that you didn't have on a Saturday.

None of that applied to an unemployed college graduate, of course, and it didn't apply to the student on summer break that Embry was either. Yet even the Sundays of the summer so far had possessed the quality for me as if it had been burned into me that this was what Sundays meant.

Somehow, even nature itself felt lazier today. There were just as many birds chirping, but their songs had an easygoing ring to them. The breezes felt slower and more refreshing than normal. Everything could tell that it was Sunday. Especially Embry, who was about to fall asleep with his head leaning back on the tree we were both propped up against.

I elbowed him lightly, startling him.

"It's only the morning," I complained. "You got up two hours ago."

"Yeah, before sunrise, Leah. Remember?"

He wasn't complaining about being up for the sunrise. He wouldn't. Embry wasn't obligated to come, but he'd been here constantly whenever we could see the sunrise together. Neither one of us had said anything, but I knew Embry had to have thought about what it would be like if he went back to school and I was still jobless. There would be a lot of Embry-less sunrises for me.

"Why couldn't you sleep?"

Embry raised one eyebrow but didn't ask how I'd figured it out. I wasn't sure either. I'd just figured that must be the explanation. Usually he was fine, so he had to have lost sleep somehow. Maybe Embry Call was becoming easier for me to read. Sometimes.

Embry sighed. "I was thinking."

My stomach plummeted. I hadn't expected something that kept him up all night to be positive, but whenever Embry used the word "thinking" I knew to expect a conversation that I didn't want to have. That's always how it happened.

I took a deep breath. Better to confront whatever it was head on instead of avoiding it. Embry never let that stand. He'd bring it up on his own, and this got it out of the way.

"About?"

Embry fell into his usual silent contemplation that came when he thought he needed time to sort out what he wanted to say before saying it. No doubt he had already composed a lot of it in his head last night when he should have been asleep.

"I saw Ethan the other day."

I hadn't expected for him to open with that. Few of the pack members talked about Ethan these days. Bringing up Ethan meant bringing up his imprint, and no one wanted to discuss it. The other imprinted guys acted nervous around him, and the younger guys acted like they had to tiptoe on eggshells when they were in his presence.

Ethan, for his part, was trying to act like everything was fine and ignored any abnormal behavior from the others. He was better than he had been in the immediate aftermath of the imprint, but I was sure that it was mostly an act. I had enough experience with acts to recognize one. You didn't bounce back from a shock like that this quickly. Internally, Ethan's emotions were a jumbled mess.

"We see Ethan every other day," I pointed out. We saw all the guys at least four times a week. I didn't think we could have avoided each other if we wanted to. The guys wanted to avoid Ethan right now, but they weren't able to manage it.

"Right, but I actually talked to him."

I nodded in understanding. That would make Embry just about the only one. I hadn't bothered to talk to Ethan because I figured he wouldn't respond. I'd been one to stew in anger on my own. Despite what the crappy advice columns would tell you, I'd never longed to spill my inner emotions to some kind, caring soul. I got that some people did, but Ethan hadn't given me the impression that he was one of those people either. I figured he was better off being left on his own to deal with his imprint how he pleased.

Of course Embry would be the one who didn't do that, the one who talked to Ethan anyway. No matter how perceptive Embry could often be of other's thoughts, he was one of those people who wouldn't let them stew in emotions. He wouldn't confront them head on about it, but he always had ways of leading them to talk about it. It was manipulation really. Poor Ethan.

"What did you talk to him about?" I asked, although I had a good idea. There was only one thing anyone wanted to talk to Ethan about these days, and no matter what topic he had started off with, Embry had to have traveled there.

"Imprinting," Embry answered simply.

He was still looking out at the horizon, deep in thought when he wasn't speaking. There was a pause before each answer he gave as if he needed extra time to process what I had said and to come up with an answer. His mind wasn't dedicated to our conversation. It had other priorities.

But I was interested in what Ethan had said. The snoop in me wouldn't let it go. It wasn't so much about imprinting or Embry's theories. That was secondary. What I was more curious about was how Ethan felt about his imprint. Yet, while I knew I would look at this as an individual situation, Embry was sure to have connected the conversation back to the various theories on imprinting.

Embry was so concerned with his own thoughts that he made no attempt to speak until I gave him another question.

"What did he say?"

For a second, it wasn't clear whether or not Embry had heard me speak. He might have been too far into his own thoughts to be paying attention, but after a few moments, he began to talk.

"He doesn't like it, but I don't know… He also didn't seem anywhere near as upset as he had been. Actually, it was kind of like he was shrugging it off when I talked to him. Like he was past being angry about it. Other than that, he was vague. I don't know if he found something good in it or just accepted that it happened and there's nothing he can do to change it."

"You don't think he was faking it?" I asked, straightening up as I got into what Embry was telling me. "Making you think he was less torn up about it than he really is?"

Embry shrugged. "He could've been, but I don't think he was. He didn't act like someone who was hiding something. There was truth to it."

He sounded more sure of his conclusion than he was of the beginning of his statement. It had been enough to convince me too. Embry's intuition might have been the only intuition I trusted. His was the only one that had proven to be reliable.

"How? How could he already be fine with it? It's only been a few days."

"I didn't say he was fine," Embry pointed out. "Just that he was better. He didn't look like his usual self at all. But that kid does bounce back. Remember what he was like during his parents' divorce and how he handled it?"

I'd actually forgotten because it had been such a non-issue once Ethan got over his initial anger. I guess that only helped prove Embry's point. I nodded.

"I'd say that it's like that," Embry continued. "He did mention her though. His imprint."

Nothing that Embry had said so far had managed to capture my interest the way the mention of Ethan's imprint did. Suddenly, my mind was very much on alert, and I watched Embry as if I could extract the truth from him with the power of my gaze.

"What did he say?"

"She goes to high school in Forks. He thinks she seems 'cool.' His word. There wasn't much animation in his voice when he talked about her, but he didn't act like he thought there was anything wrong with her."

"Always a bonus in a soul mate."

Embry went on as if he hadn't heard my interjection. "He hasn't told her about the wolves yet or the imprint. Thinks it's too early, and I'd bet it is. She doesn't have even a passing knowledge of the legends. It'll be completely new to her. She's not even from Forks originally. Her parents moved the family here a few months ago. Maybe she's still trying to make friends. That might help Ethan get to know her."

My forehead crinkled in confusion. "Who moves to Forks?"

In reality, people had to at times. I got that. It was just that it happened so infrequently that it felt like a fiction, not something that actually happened. I couldn't remember seeing a for sale sign in front of a house in Forks in my life, although maybe I hadn't paid attention because I hadn't expected to see them in the first place.

"Very funny," Embry said wryly before explaining further. "Ethan said something about her mom's job. I don't know what it is. Anyway, as I was saying," he looked at me as if willing me to interrupt again, and I shrugged, "Erica—that's her name—is apparently very ambitious. She wants to be a CEO. Ethan was excited about it when he told me. Actually, he was kind of rambling about her ambitions and about how she wants to go to an Ivy league. He said all this stuff about her goals. He seemed more excited about them than anything else about her."

"You think he's excited because he thinks she doesn't want kids if she's going to be working like that, don't you?"

Embry shrugged. He was frowning. " _I_ don't necessarily think that's true, but I think Ethan does. Maybe just because he needs to believe that. I doubt he asked her about her thoughts on kids. It'd freak her out, and he didn't say anything about it to me. But it did sound like he thinks her career means it'll be less likely that they'll have kids."

It wasn't the most far-fetched assumption, but part of me worried about Ethan getting his hopes up only to find out differently in the future. I wasn't someone that people looked at and immediately thought I wanted kids, but I did. Someday.

"Hey, at least she didn't tell him that she wants to be a stay-at-home mom."

Embry shot me a look that showed he wasn't amused by my attempt at a joke, but I couldn't help grinning anyway. It was better than staying moody about it. There wasn't anything either one of us could do. The situation wasn't about us. No matter how much I suspected that Embry wanted to be involved in it, we couldn't change either Ethan's or his imprint's wants.

All we could do was hope that Ethan's premature hope wasn't too off base.

 **August 12th, 2009**

If I had thought that graduation was scary, going to my new job for the first time was a million times worse. It had taken months to find this job, and I couldn't turn off the voice in my head that kept reminding me that, if I screwed this up, I wouldn't find another one. Not anytime soon.

I'd been staring at myself in my bedroom mirror for an absurdly long time that morning. There was no good reason for it. My clothes had been picked out the night before, chosen to make myself look as professional as possible. I knew I was ready. I just didn't feel like it. Surely there was something I could wear that would look better. "Should I change?" kept running through my head.

My phone buzzed from where it sat on the dresser beside me. I glanced down at it, able to see Embry's 'good luck' message without opening the phone. My stomach twisted again.

After all the thoughts I'd had about Embry going back to school and leaving me to solitary sunrises, now I'd ditched him. I wondered if he had bothered to go out to our cliff by himself. To this day, I'd never been able to figure out if Embry came to see me or the sunrise each morning. He may have skipped it today.

The thing was, I could have gone. It would have been feasible if I'd been willing to rush through getting ready afterward. Maybe I'd do it in the future. Today, that possibility had left me feeling even more nauseous. I needed all the time in the world to prepare myself for this.

Time spent staring at myself in the mirror and making sure everything was okay. It was important.

With a sigh, I reached down and grabbed the phone. 'Thanks' sounded too brief of a reply, but it would have to do. My mind was on too many things to bother with composing anything more. Embry would understand.

I glanced at the clock. It hadn't changed since the last time I'd looked at it, but it was getting close to that magical time that would signal that I needed to leave the house.

Everything was quiet. Seth was sleeping in on his final Friday of summer break. His snores were the only sounds in the house. Charlie had already left for work. I wasn't positive what Mom was up to, but since today was one of her days off, it wasn't difficult to imagine that she was sleeping too. I hadn't heard her moving around enough to suggest that she was awake.

I was glad she hadn't felt it necessary to wake up and see me off today. Her noticeable pride at my graduation had made me feel uneasy more than anything else, and I didn't want the same sort of emotions filling up the house before I went to work and had to make a good first impression.

The clock changed again. It was time for me to go.

I grabbed my phone and my bag, double checking that the car keys were still safely inside. It frustrated me that I couldn't run to Forks. It would have been easier, and the time spent with the wind hitting my face would have calmed my nerves. But attempting that would be foolish. I wasn't a college student who could show up to class looking however I wanted anymore. These clothes weren't made for being dragged through dirt, and the makeup I had put on today would never survive phasing.

Driving in a car was different from running. When I ran as a wolf, my mind felt free as long as it wasn't being filled by obnoxious boys. In the car, my thoughts felt amplified as they bounced off the car windows and ceiling. The radio didn't help. I could hardly focus on the song despite it being one of my favorites of the moment. Instead, various things that could go wrong floated through my head.

My anxiety was only amplified once I drove past the Forks welcome sign. I was close.

Strangely enough, a sense of calm came over me as I pulled into the parking lot of the unremarkable office building. I'd been here once before for my interview, and for some reason, the little bit of familiarity it gave off made me feel better about the day ahead. The interview hadn't been bad. It had gotten me the job, and no one had seemed to hate me. That was always nice.

Gathering up my things and double checking that I looked put together, I stepped out of the car. Pushing it shut, I listened to the sound of it locking and took a deep breath. It had to happen now. Already, someone might have noticed me out of a window. I couldn't look like a creepy person who ambled around in the parking lot to stall coming inside.

The woman at the front desk smiled at me much too brightly for the morning, but then, I supposed it was part of her job description.

"Ms. Clearwater?" Her voice lifted at the end to make it a question, but I could tell she already knew it was me. She could remember me from the interview.

"Yes." I struggled to remember her name before I noticed it on a nameplate on her desk. "Good morning, Mrs. Vidal."

Her smile widened as she motioned down the hall that led away from her desk.

"Ms. Ye is waiting to get you started."

I managed a smile that hopefully didn't betray how many knots my stomach was in. Ms. Ye, my new boss. Seeing her was going to be the most nerve-wracking part of the day, but if I could get through it, then things would only look up from there. At least, I hoped so.

Ms. Ye's office was in the back of the building and took up more space than any of the other offices. I headed for it while my eyes traveled over the other doors in the building, wondering where I would be placed for who knew how long into the future.

I was lucky to get this job, but it was only a small insurance firm operating out of Forks. There wasn't an abundance of people who worked here, which meant there also wasn't an abundance of rooms. There were only so many spare places they could stick me in.

Ms. Ye's office door was open. That was different from when I had arrived for my interview, and I wondered if it was because she was expecting me. I peeked into the room as I rapped my knuckles against the door frame.

Ms. Ye glanced up, a grin on her face as she noticed me.

"Leah, hello. It's nice to see you today. Ready to get started?"

I tried to smile back as best as I could. Now there was excitement beginning to battle with my nerves, and it seemed like the excitement would win. Today was going well so far, and Ms. Ye appeared as friendly as she had during the interview. Though, at the same time, she exuded an air of being in control that I admired.

"I am," I assured her.

She nodded, standing up from her desk with a small stack of papers in her hand.

"Let me show you what's going to be your office."

She led me to a room down the hall from hers. It wasn't large by any stretch of the imagination, but it was an office, not a cubicle. That was one benefit of working at a smaller business, I supposed.

The space was bare. I would have to do something with it, so I didn't lose my mind as I sat here day after day.

Ms. Ye gave me all the instructions I needed to get started and then got back to her work, leaving me to my own devices. I started in on it, determined to make a good impression. It wasn't anything I had to struggle through. For once, I felt like my degree had qualified me for something. It was a nice feeling.

Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I was in someone else's office. It didn't feel like mine. There were no personal touches to signal who it belonged to. There was a disconnect in my mind from where I was supposed to be and where I felt like I was supposed to be. Even as I sat here and did the work, I felt like I was acting. There was no way this was a real job I was doing at a real business.

When I stopped to think about what I was doing and where I was, life felt less intimidating. Here I was doing the job I would be doing for quite a while if things went according to plan, and I wasn't struggling. I knew what to do, and as far as I could tell, I was doing a decent job. For some reason, I had doubted that would happen before.

So much of the anxiety I'd been feeling since the lead up to graduation began to fade. This still wasn't the dream job that Embry had envisioned for me, but it was a job. It was a job that I could do and not be miserable at every day. That was more than my fears had allowed me to expect.

 **August 15th, 2009**

While I couldn't be anything but thankful for how great my first several days of work were, getting to sit on the cliff and look out at the sunrise was a welcome return to routine on Saturday. Somehow, even after years of doing this, the colors of the sky continued to hold a sense of wonder for me, but spending the morning with Embry was what brought me happiness more than the sky or the wind or the trees.

"How has it been?" Embry asked as he took a seat under our usual tree.

In my eagerness, I'd beaten him here for once.

"I've already told you three times," I said with a roll of my eyes. "You text me every day after work."

"That's not the same as hearing you tell me in person," he urged. "Go ahead. Tell me all of it again. I bet you'll wind up telling me more than you did before."

So I did. I told him about my boss and the other people in the office who, so far, I'd been getting along well with. I told him about the boring tasks I had to do, though I tried to make it sound more important than it was. There wasn't one real story from my first three days as an employed worker. Already, I could see what the routine would be, and it wasn't going to be something that provided a new story each day. Any novelty this might have had for Embry would be gone come next week when I had nothing but the same information to share with him again.

For today though, he was interested in every minute detail I could include, and for reasons I couldn't understand, I was inclined to include them. I hadn't realized that I was so eager to talk about work until I had the opportunity to talk about work. And the way Embry responded as if I was saying something interesting only made me say more. For once, I felt excited about what I was doing with my days.

It was a foreign feeling, and one I had never expected to receive from this job when I took it. It scared me that I was thinking this way now.

"Tom's interesting," I said. I was reaching the tail-end of my stories. Most of what could be said had already been said. "Interesting compared to everyone else anyway. He's been trying to convince Ms. Ye to install an aquarium in the office. He says it would build a positive work environment, but Ms. Ye says she's not installing an aquarium that she'll have to pay someone to maintain. Tom swears he'll do it for free, but then Ms. Ye starts in on labor laws. Apparently, he's been insistent on it for a year but hasn't gotten her to budge."

Embry chuckled at the anecdote, and I felt happy that someone else could appreciate these moments, no matter how small they were, that had made up my life for the past week. No one listened with rapt attention to office stories. Not unless they were one in a million occurrences, which weren't the type of things that happened in Forks, Washington. The best one I had was about a guy who wanted an aquarium.

The smile on Embry's face was genuine though, and he didn't show any signs of disinterest. He seemed happy to listen to everything I said.

"I'm glad that you like it there," he said, and my heart skipped a beat when I heard how truthful the statement was.

At first, Embry had been irritated that I had taken a job that didn't blow me away. He hadn't said as much because he wanted to be supportive, but I had been able to see it in his eyes. There was no way he would have stopped me from taking the job. It had become too apparent even to him that I wasn't going to find a dream job.

That had been a larger disappointment for him than it had been me, and I could see that he was relieved that I wasn't miserable.

"It's early in the game," I cautioned him. "Who knows what dirty secrets I'll turn up over time, but for now, yeah, I'd say I'm not miserable."

Embry smiled at me. Only this time there was a hint of sadness there as well. He'd keep searching for the elusive dream job without telling me. Like he knew what that job would look like better than I did. I wouldn't have been surprised if he did.

 **August 17th, 2009**

The atmosphere on Monday morning was different than it had been during my first week of work. No longer did Seth's snores fill the house every morning as I got dressed. Instead, I came downstairs to find him already at the kitchen table, looking drained.

While he never would have turned down an opportunity to sleep in later, Seth was typically fine in the mornings. He wasn't one to appear groggy or irritated. He took waking up in stride no matter what time of day it happened at.

But today wasn't one of the usual days. Today he looked like he'd been to hell and back during the night.

"Good morning," I greeted him as I headed straight for the coffee pot. My throat cracked after not being used all night. Seth replied halfheartedly, sticking his spoon back into his bowl of cereal.

"Sleep well?" I asked once I'd gotten my cup of coffee and slid in across from him at the table.

Seth shook his head and groaned in frustration. He wasn't eager to have a conversation with me.

"At least it's your senior year." Maybe that would be enough to perk him up. "This is your last first day of school in La Push."

I wasn't sure if it would be his last first day of school ever or not. Seth never spoke about his plans for the future. I didn't know if there were any yet.

My statement caused Seth to groan again. So, senior year wasn't reassuring. Maybe Seth was catching my fear of the future now that I'd finished with it. The difference was that mine hadn't come until college graduation. High school graduation had been nothing but fun for me. I'd been more than ready for high school to end when the day came.

I tried to think of something else to say. "Doesn't Al start his freshman year today?"

Seth nodded. He looked down at his cereal bowl too intently. Up until that point, I had figured he was just tired. It was understandable on the first day when he had to get up after having all summer break to sleep in. But now I was starting to think there was something else.

"What's up?" I asked, knowing he wouldn't try to avoid what I was asking.

Seth sighed as he chased one of the few cereal pieces left in his bowl with his spoon. Scooping one out, he popped it in his mouth and then let the spoon clatter against the side of the bowl as he dropped it.

"It's just-" He stopped to collect his thoughts, looking conflicted. "Like you said, Al starts high school today, and I start my senior year. Then I graduate, and he's still going to school."

"That's what you're worrying about?" I had to admit I was confused as to why that was a huge problem. "It's not like Al's leaving, Seth. He'll still be in La Push. That's not the end of the world."

Seth stared down at his bowl as he twirled the spoon around in the leftover milk.

I continued slowly, "Unless _you_ won't be in La Push."

It was the first time the possibility had entered my mind. Rachel and Rebecca were the only people I knew who had done it despite the countless people who had talked about it. Seth was always happy with La Push and spoke about it with a tone of pride that most teenagers his age never used. I knew he was happy here.

He shrugged. So that future path was at least one he was considering. I worked through possible reasons in my mind or ideas of what he planned to do once he got away. Did he want to go to a college that happened to be far away? Or was this coming from a general feeling of wanting to escape like those I was so familiar with?

"I wouldn't go that far," Seth told me. "And not forever. I do want to live here. It's just that I've been thinking...about college. I want to go, and I think it might be a good idea to have the experience somewhere else?" His voice went higher, and he looked up at me as if I could answer the question. When I didn't, his eyes fell back down. "It would just be for a few years, and then I'd come back. But by then Al will have graduated too, and he'll have moved on."

"Who says he'll have moved on? People do the long distance relationship thing all the time, and you just said you wouldn't even be that far away. You're both wolves. It's not like running somewhere takes anywhere near as long as driving a car."

Seth's frown lessened, and I was happy to know that I had said something to help.

"I think you'd be fine," I continued to assure him. "No matter what you do for college. It doesn't have to be an ending for you and Al as long as work on your relationship or whatever."

Seth offered me a small grin. "Thanks, Leah."

He stood up, taking his bowl to the sink. I glanced over at the clock. It was right at the time he left for school and only a few minutes before I would need to leave as well. Seth waved goodbye as he left. He didn't look as sad as he had when I'd come downstairs, and I hoped it would stay that way for the rest of the day.


	9. September

**A/N: Huge thank you to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading this chapter!**

 **September 8th, 2009**

I broke out of my daze to realize that I had been tapping my fingers against the wood of my desk again. That was turning into a habit. I shook my head and focused back on the open file on the computer.

Distraction was never this much of a problem for me. I usually plunged into my work head first and got it done as quickly as I could. It was what I preferred. The sooner I got it done, the better. Not that I sped through it without putting in effort. I just focused on it until it was done and I could put it behind me.

Today, though, I kept daydreaming. Embry was back in Port Angeles, sitting through classes just like last year. I wasn't sure why that bothered me. Nothing had changed for me. I was still at work like I had been for nearly a month. I was still going to see Embry as much as I had been, even if his free time was no longer what it had been during the summer. Nothing was changing. Nothing that hadn't changed months ago.

Yet something about knowing Embry was at school without me felt wrong. It felt wrong in a way that starting my job hadn't. While Embry had been on summer break, it had been easy enough to pretend that we were in the same boat. It shouldn't have been, since he hadn't been looking for a job like I had. Somewhere along the line of him helping me, it had been easy for me to forget that he was still a student. Embry was still in the life that I had left behind in June.

I felt ostracized even though I shouldn't have. Nothing about this changed our relationship. Hell, what had I been telling Seth not too long ago?

Shaking my head at myself, I focused on my work yet again. I'd re-centered myself too many times today. I hadn't been here long enough to screw anything up without repercussions. Situations happened, but it was preferable that they not happen so soon after first getting the job. And I very well couldn't explain to my boss that I was having trouble concentrating because my best friend was at school and I wasn't. That would be a great way to make it sound like I still belonged in high school.

My phone buzzed on the desktop, and I glanced down at it. It wasn't surprising to see Embry's name on the screen. Half the text messages I got were from Embry.

 **It's weird that you're not here** , he'd written.

I sighed, staring down at the screen.

 **It's weird not being there.**

It was almost an admission of how difficult this day was turning out for me, but it felt like the right thing to say. Part of me felt better knowing that Embry was thinking about me enough to text. I glanced at the time on my computer, wondering if he was texting me while sitting in class or while out on campus. Probably the latter. Embry was too good of a student. I enjoyed teasing him about it.

Embry's next message was a frowny face emoji. I sighed, closing the phone. There was work to be done. I'd put it off enough today. With what little reassurance Embry's messages had given me, I focused my attention back on what I was being paid to do.

 **September 10th, 2009**

The entire place reeked of leech. You'd have thought it would have eased up now that four of them were gone, but it turned out that the remaining vampires had enough stink of their own.

This was the first time I'd been to the Cullen house in more than a year. Nessie always came to La Push. She'd begun pleading to leave Forks as often as possible once Alice and Jasper were gone. I wasn't sure if it was her way of punishing the rest of her family for letting the others leave, or if she left because she couldn't stand to be at her family's house now that it was half empty. It was never something she wanted to talk about.

Any anger Nessie had shown towards Bella and Edward was perhaps the reasoning behind today's birthday party. There hadn't been a large one last year at Nessie's insistence. She'd decided that people gathering to focus their attention on her wasn't her thing, and everyone had gone along with it.

This year, she'd wrinkled her nose when I mentioned being invited to the party, but I hadn't heard her complain. I knew it was Bella's doing and not something Nessie herself desired. Alice hadn't been here to plan a party out of her natural desires for such planning either. No, this was Bella's plan for winning her daughter over again.

It was going to blow up in her face. You didn't bribe people with things they didn't want. Part of me wanted to say as much to Bella's face, but I was settling for repeating it in my head until I was sure that Edward had caught wind of it. Whether he passed it on or not, I was satisfied with annoying him in place of his wife.

This party looked a lot like Nessie's first birthday. Actually, it was scarily similar, like Bella had used most of the same decorations or at least tried to mimic them. Maybe because Nessie had enjoyed that party so much, and Bella wanted to take her back to those memories. I doubted she'd be able to when crucial pieces of the puzzle were missing this time around.

That fact was emphasized when you looked out across the backyard. We were divided much like we had been last time, with vampires on one side and wolves on the other, yet it wasn't as even of a divide. There were fewer vampires, not just the missing Cullens but other vampires as well. Not as many of them had come, and I wondered if there was any reason for that. If there was, I doubted I would be able to dig an answer out of one of the vamps.

Suddenly, Edward was beside me. I jumped, almost spilling the lemonade inside the cup I had just picked up from the table. Edward smirked, and I didn't have to read his thoughts to know he was proud of himself for startling a wolf.

"We're not hiding anything," he said, defensive that I had implied it was a possibility within my own head.

"You don't have to read my thoughts," I reminded him. "It's better for everyone that way. You think anyone would get along if everyone had your power? No. I can think whatever I want, Cullen. I don't care if your family has any secrets or not. Besides the obvious one about being vampires."

"We're not hiding anything," he repeated as if I hadn't spoken. "Jacob knows why so few vampires are here. Apparently, he hasn't told you."

I'd been walking back to the table I was sitting at, but Edward's words made me stop and look back at him. He was watching me like he knew he had just created a conflict. But I could see the honest confusion in his face too, like he didn't understand what was happening any better than I did.

Turning back around, I saw Jake watching us, looking alarmed. He wasn't the only one either. All the guys had caught on to Edward's words and were looking at Jake like they expected answers. Sam looked particularly ticked off. Even Bella was glaring, but hers was the only one directed at Edward. Something told me he would be getting a lecture later about "ruining" their daughter's birthday party.

Nessie, for her part, watched everyone closely, but she didn't appear angry about the attention shifting away from her. She probably welcomed it.

"I was going to," Jake said without preamble. He rose to his feet, looking around at us carefully. Even the few vampires in attendance were watching. Mom, Charlie, Billy, and all the imprints turned to watch when they heard Jake's loud voice, wondering what was happening after being unable to catch Edward's words for themselves.

"It's a small thing right now," Jake continued, voice defensive. "I was going to talk to Leah and Sam about it in the next few days. It's just been busy lately, and everyone has stuff going on. I didn't think it would matter if I put it off."

I wasn't sure that his answer was genuine. He was glancing at Nessie out of the corner of his eye, and I wondered if his motivation had been about pushing it off until after her birthday.

"You can explain now," I said, stepping closer to my alpha and fixing him with a disapproving gaze. "We have time."

I heard Bella release an unimpressive growl behind me, but I didn't bother turning around to look at her. I did glance at Ness, but seeing that she still didn't look upset, I didn't see any harm in letting this play out further. I wanted to know what my alpha was hiding from us.

Jake sighed, looking torn. Unlike me, he cared how pissed off Bella got. He kept glancing between her and Nessie to gauge their reactions. He even glanced at Edward a few times as if he wanted the Cullen to help him after being the one to instigate the confrontation in the first place. Of course, Edward did nothing. He was sitting with several of the Denali, watching what was happening with an expression of slight interest and nothing more.

"The other vampires are scared to be around the Cullens. Most of them are at least," Jake said. He was still looking toward Edward and Bella as if expecting one of them to speak up at any moment. Bella had settled into a glare that she directed at Jake as he talked. "The Volturi have started spreading their not too great views of the Cullens around. Possibly as a way to ensure that no one befriends them and gives them more prestige.

"There's no sign of any coming attack." He rushed to add that part, scared we were about to jump on him for endangering everyone's safety over a lack of fair warning. "Carlisle swears that it will be a century or more before the Volturi make it that far. They prefer to let things play out slowly, increase the tension. This is just a first step. If they turn people off the Cullens for a few hundred years, then the Cullens lose power without the Volturi having to do anything too difficult. Then they can be taken out like it's nothing to the Volturi."

"It's true," Carlisle said. I jumped again, not realizing that the oldest vamp was as close to us as he was. I turned to look at him. Behind him, I could see the vampires watching him approach us. Carlisle had always been the least hesitant about being in our presence. The only one who might have been more so was Bella, due to meeting us while still a human, but she avoided us for entirely different reasons these days.

Carlisle continued, "The Volturi exert as little effort as they can when policing our kind. They won't do more than they have to, and they have only grown in patience as they have aged. A century for them is no more than a few pages of a book."

"But you can't know for sure how much or how little time they'll take," Sam said. While a few of the guys didn't look like they believed Carlisle, Sam looked the angriest about having learned this information only today. "You're speculating. I know you believe what you're telling us, but what if they don't wait? What if they attack? What then?"

"Half of my family is already gone. If any attack were to happen, it would be directed at those of us in England. They're closer and easier for the Italians to get to. We would take that as a warning that they were coming for Forks next, but I don't believe that will happen. Alice is watching them closely and will let us know if something in their plan changes."

Sam's face was contorted into something between anger and acceptance. Many of the wolves had never accepted Alice's fortune-telling abilities. Their accuracy felt too good to be true, and everything she saw was taken with a grain of salt. I knew Sam would rather be over prepared than under prepared, no matter how unlikely the Volturi showing up was.

For some reason, I found myself more inclined to agree with Carlisle than my fellow wolves. The Volturi hadn't struck me as vampires who lived on the fast track the one time I had actually seen them. I could easily imagine them taking ages to complete simple tasks because they couldn't be bothered to complete them sooner. They had that sense of superiority that hinted that they had all the time in the world to be as big of asses as they'd like to be.

But I was also angry that we were just now being told when Jake had known. I was his beta, and he hadn't bothered to tell me any of this. When he looked over and saw my glare, he cringed. I took pride in that. Bella had been glaring at him this whole time and had gotten no reaction at all. And she could have sucked his blood.

Sam turned to look at Jake too. For a second, I thought he was going to chew Jake out in front of everyone, but instead, he took a calming breath and said, "We should amp up patrols as much as we can. Just to be safe."

Jake's brow furrowed in a frown. "We're talking centuries here, Sam. We can't stay on high alert for centuries. Most of us won't be around that long."

I could see a flicker of acceptance in Sam's eyes as he realized Jake was right, but he wasn't going to back down.

"We have no other choice."

Jake sighed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "This is why I waited to tell you. I knew you'd get like this."

"We're talking about the safety of our people, Jacob."

Carlisle chose that moment to interject, sounding hesitant to intervene. "We'll be gone long before any attack," he said. "I am confident that they would attack us in England before Forks. But I expect all of us—except Nessie—will be gone long before that day comes. They won't come for your people, not to get us."

I wasn't sure how much the guys found that reassuring. I was too busy watching Nessie to observe their reactions. She frowned up at her grandfather, looking upset about the conversation for the first time. I couldn't know for sure if Carlisle was talking in terms of months or years here, but for Nessie, with only three years of life, any statement like that felt like it was about the immediate future.

Now I thought we might have had a better idea why the other Cullens had left in the first place. How long had they known this was coming? Alice might have had her first vision about it not long after the Volturi left us alone. Had they kept it from us that long? Had Jake known that long?

I doubted it. Otherwise, Edward's surprise at us not knowing wouldn't have been revealed only now. Unfortunately, I saw him more than I liked thanks to his father-in-law. It wasn't often, but between picking Nessie up, dropping Nessie off, and other "family" things I was coerced into, it would have come out.

Or maybe I refused to believe that Jake would conceal information from his own beta when he was supposed to trust me with shit like this.

Sam had an intense look of concentration on his face. He was planning out new patrol schedules in his head. We'd have them by the end of the party. I dreaded knowing how much work would be pushed on us. I loved running as a wolf. It was my favorite part of phasing. What I didn't want was to have no life because I was patrolling any time I wasn't at work, and I wouldn't have put it above Sam to do just that. As one of the wolves not in school, the bulk of the responsibility was sure to go to us no matter what our jobs demanded of us too.

Everyone was beginning to disperse and go back to other conversations. But there was an underlying tension among the guests. I retook my seat between Jake and Embry. You could have cut the air with a knife as Jake stared down at the table, just waiting for me to yell at him.

I didn't look at him. I couldn't. After the party, I would go off on him, but I wouldn't do it during the party. For Nessie's sake. She looked distraught, and I was worried she might cry. Then Jake would be going off on someone later too, and I didn't need to listen to that.

"Time for cake!" Bella announced in a faux cheerful tone. She clapped her hands in a move that was so unlike Bella that I had to roll my eyes.

It was another attempt at cheering Nessie up, but Nessie didn't look any happier than she had before as she ambled over to her mother and begrudgingly let us sing an uninspired rendition of "Happy Birthday."

Bella's plan failed even further when you could hear the frustration and fear in everyone's voices.

 **September 18th, 2009**

 _No vampire here_ , I muttered as I ran. _And no vampire here._

 _I get it, Leah. No vampires._

 _I'm just making sure we all know that we're safe. What would we do if there was a vampire? We have to stay on top of things._

I could imagine Embry rolling his eyes if he'd currently been human and standing in front of me, but since that wasn't possible as a wolf, he settled for a stony silence. I knew I was being difficult. Embry hated how much we had to patrol these days just like I did. It was a lot like the old days except our chances of coming across a vampire were lower than they had been back then. Sam was running us ragged on a one-in-a-million chance that any given second was the second the Volturi made a move.

It wasn't going to be.

The only plus side to it all was that Embry and I had been paired together for the majority of our patrols. It had to be purposeful. I just wasn't sure whether I had Jake or Sam to blame.

I was thankful for an excuse to see Embry more, of course, but I wished it didn't involve having him inside my head. It was still hard for me to control my thoughts when I could hear his. No matter what either of us did, one of us was sure to slip and reveal more than we meant to.

The fact that we had feelings for each other was an open secret, and my steady stream of complaints was the only way I knew of to avoid talking about it. The tactic may have been transparent, but it served its purpose.

For now.

 **September 22nd, 2009**

Seth didn't look up at me when I walked into his room and flopped down on his bed. He was at his desk, scribbling something down in a notebook. From what little I could make out of the textbook that was open in front of him, it looked like a biology book. I could see diagrams of cells coloring the page.

I laid there in silence as Seth kept writing things down. Eventually, he sat the pencil down and turned to look at me.

"What's up?" he asked, leaning the desk chair back on its hind legs.

"I'm bored."

Seth snorted. "How can you be bored? This is the first time you've gotten off of patrol in weeks."

It was a valid question. Jake had finally convinced Sam that we could go easier on patrols, so I had more time after work each day. That should have been a good thing, but even the brief stint of extra patrols had left me struggling to remember what I used to do with my time.

Part of me was tempted to take a nap. Seth's bed was rather comfortable. He might have to force me to get up.

I turned my head to see that he had grabbed the book off the desk and had it in his lap as he flipped through it.

"What're you studying?"

Seth glanced up at me skeptically.

"I'm bored," I repeated in lieu of an explanation.

"It's high school biology."

He wasn't going to say anything more about it, and I could understand. Who wanted to discuss what they were studying with their sister?

"Senior year going okay?" I asked, fishing for a conversation.

Seth sighed. Realizing that he wasn't going to get any studying done, he dropped the textbook back on his desk.

"It's going fine. It's nothing different from every other year except it's different classes."

"I remember senior year," I said, not sure why I was bringing it up. Senior year was one of the periods of my life that I tried the hardest to forget. Sure, I might have put the mess with Sam far behind me, but I still didn't like thinking back to the memories Sam was tied up in. I preferred to keep the past in the past. I didn't do reminiscing or nostalgia. I hadn't for a long time.

Seth looked attentive now that I had said it. It was difficult to know whether I should continue with the train of thought or switch directions and save myself the frustration.

Nothing about my life was the same as it had been my senior year of high school. And I was thankful for that. I didn't think going on about how thankful I was that everything had changed would be comforting for Seth. Not if he was still worried about what would happen between him and Al come May.

So I fell quiet again.

Seth understood. He frowned and turned his chair back around to the desk, going back to his book. He stared down at the page, eyes not moving to read the information.

"How are you and Al?" I asked instead.

We hadn't talked about it in a long time. Seth had become even more private about whatever was happening between them. He wasn't hiding it like in the past. He just didn't talk about it, and I was worried that it was because thinking about how the relationship might turn out was scary for him.

I heard him sigh. He didn't turn back around when he answered. "We're good. Great, actually."

I smiled, happy he had that if nothing else.

"I'm glad."

Seth glanced over his shoulder and grinned at me. It was barely there, but it was better than nothing.

"Me too. I just hope it stays that way."

"If you're both that determined that it will, then it will."

Seth shook his head. "You of all people should know it's not always that easy. Shit, Leah. For all I know, one of us could imprint."

I snapped, "Don't think like that."

Seth turned back around to look at me. He appeared startled but not that surprised at my reaction. I took deep, calming breaths. I was surprised at my reaction. I hadn't seen it coming at all.

If there was one person in this world who never deserved to go through what I had, it was Seth. I would have died before letting him suffer the way I had for so long. It wouldn't happen. I wouldn't allow it. If there was one thing I would ever fight fate on, it would be keeping her from screwing life up for my little brother. I would never stand for it. He'd come too far for it to end badly.

I had faith that fate wouldn't do it. I wasn't sure what it was, but I could feel that Seth would be happy. Seth had to be happy. Maybe that was the one shred of optimism that my life had allowed me to hold onto, or maybe it was just something about Seth as a person. I wasn't sure. But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would be happy in the end.

My own life could be different if I was capable of believing the same thing about myself.

But I wasn't Seth, and I would never be Seth. I didn't have the same bright light that drew people to me, people that would be sure to become too enamored to ever leave. My own light was dimmer, harder to both find and to keep glowing.

Seth though—Seth would be fine. There was no other option for fate to take.


	10. October

**A/N: Thank you yet again to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading this chapter. Also, I know this chapter is shorter than normal, but hopefully it's an important enough chapter that you'll forgive me for that. Or maybe you won't...**

 **October 13th, 2009**

"Hey," Embry greeted as he lowered himself to the ground under our usual tree.

"Hey," I returned with a grin.

Embry's smile was strained. Something was wrong, and I felt my own grin slipping.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Embry's eyes widened before he got himself under control. Had he really thought he was hiding it well enough for me not to notice?

"Nothing," he replied. His voice was stiff and distant, a clear sign that he was doing a bad job of lying to me.

It was uncharacteristic of Embry. Not that he would try to act like nothing was wrong when it was, but that he was easily readable. No one I knew could conceal their innermost thoughts the way Embry could, and his failings now alerted me to the fact that, whatever it was, it was a bigger deal than I wanted to know.

I nudged him in the side to get him to focus on me again.

"What's wrong?" I repeated.

With a large sigh, he glanced back down at the ground. I could read the defeat on his face. His plans of acting fine had failed. There was no way I was letting him get away with not explaining himself, and he knew it. I wanted an explanation.

"We need to talk," Embry said with a long exhale.

My stomach dropped, and my heart began racing. While I'd been worried before, that had been for Embry's sake. Now I was terrified, and it had nothing to do with how Embry felt.

"You were going to lie to me about us needing to talk," I said in an attempt at a joke. Except I couldn't laugh, and Embry sure as hell didn't either.

He didn't say anything, just stared out at the horizon as if willing this situation to magically disappear. Except it wouldn't. It couldn't now that he had put it out there. Truthfully, we had gotten on a train months ago that was heading for this and would have reached it no matter what. Embry's reluctance was only one of the many delays we'd experienced along the way.

Because I knew what Embry wanted to talk about. And I didn't want to talk about it with him.

"Leah," Embry started again. We'd been silent for so long by then that I was hoping we'd be able to stay that way before departing home once the sun was up. Embry wasn't going to let that happen, not now that he'd had the courage to speak up in the first place.

"Yeah," I said, failing to sound nonchalant.

A sliver of sunlight began to peek over the horizon. My gaze zeroed in on it.

"The kiss." I sucked in a sharp intake of breath as soon as Embry said it, stopping him from adding whatever he had planned to say. I hadn't meant to do it. It had only been a reaction. Not only my cheeks but the entire length of my neck flushed.

We fell silent, but this time, the air was filled with tension. Embry's words hung between us, unwilling to dissipate.

I wasn't going to be the one to talk first. I had nothing to say, nothing I _could_ say.

Embry whispered, "It happened."

I closed my eyes, willing the gathering tears to go away.

"Uh huh," I replied dumbly. Saying anything more solidified it too much. If I only replied vaguely, the memory could remain something that had happened in a dream world. It didn't have to be dealt with in reality. But Embry wasn't going to play by those rules anymore. He'd proven that already.

With a sigh, Embry said my name again. I didn't want to respond, but the combination of his voice saying my name and his gaze on me drew my eyes to his. He was watching me as if scared I would bolt if he moved too quickly. He watched me as if I were a scared bird with a broken wing who he wanted to help but had to approach cautiously.

I didn't like it. I didn't want to be some sad, injured animal.

But my only other options were pretending like nothing that had happened mattered to me or embracing it and going all in. Neither one of those options were appealing.

"Leah, we have to discuss this. It's only going to get harder the longer we let it fester between us."

I shook my head. "Not if we just act like it never happened."

It was the most I had been able to get out since the subject had been brought up, and the result was Embry looking heartbroken. I cursed myself. I had meant what I said, but surely there were more sensitive ways to phrase it. I didn't want to act like it had never happened because I didn't want to be with Embry. He had to understand how terrifying the idea of "us" was.

After everything Embry had watched me go through, he couldn't believe I could do this. Not with him, not with another wolf. Embry was tied up in my past. He had seen how spectacularly relationships blew up in my face. I didn't know if I was ready for that again.

"Embry," I said hesitantly. He wouldn't look at me anymore. Already, I'd screwed things up. This was why we couldn't talk about this. Nothing good would come from it. All we'd managed to do was mess things up. They'd been fine before.

"Embry," I tried again, laying a hand on his arm. "Think about what would happen if something between us blew up in our faces. We're wolves. We're in the same pack. I'm your beta. We see into each other's thoughts. What would that be like if we broke up? You saw what happened with me and Sam. It would be that all over again. Whether there was an imprint or not."

"Why do you always think about what will happen if things go wrong?" Embry asked. His voice was desperate for me to view the situation like he did. "Things can go well, Leah. That's as good a possibility as things going bad is."

"No, it isn't," I scoffed. "Any relationship is more likely to end than not end. It's foolish to think otherwise."

Embry growled in frustration. "It's not foolish, Leah. Actually, maybe if you think like that it is foolish, but if you're determined to make things work, then it's not. Then you stand a chance."

"A slim chance."

Embry leaned back against the tree trunk, eyes closed. I tore my eyes away from him to stare at the sunrise. Today, there wasn't any enjoyment in it. The colors appeared muted compared to most mornings, like these came from a watercolor where the artist had used too much water.

Embry spoke again in a whisper. "And if we did break up for whatever reason, that isn't doomsday either. I know the situation with you and Sam was as shit as any break up can be, but that doesn't have to be how things would end with us."

I felt relieved hearing Embry acknowledge that a break up was possible. It was the most rational he had sounded since the start of this conversation.

"I guess," I said with a shrug.

It was true that it was difficult to imagine Embry hating me or me hating him. That wasn't the disastrous future I pictured. What I pictured was far more terrible. Because me being torn beyond compare was far more frightening that any possible anger I could feel. Embry and I could hate each other all we wanted. Anger wasn't the emotion that destroyed you.

Embry didn't say anything as he watched me. I could feel his eyes on me without looking at him. Tears pricked my eyes, but I wouldn't let them fall.

Finally, Embry stood up. I felt simultaneously relieved and distraught, a combination of emotions I had never believed possible until that moment. I wanted to pull him back down and keep him close, but I also wanted this conversation to end. I wanted it to disappear into the abyss, never to be heard from again.

It wasn't over though. Embry hovered above me, watching as he spoke.

"You have to stop running someday, Leah. You already have in so many ways. Someday you have to take the last step."

I held my breath as he disappeared into the trees.

Last step. I hadn't thought about my life in terms of repairing it and moving on in more than a year. Sometime after setting my major, I'd begun to feel discouraged about most things instead of optimistic about them continuing to get better. That combined with knowing I was finally unaffected by Sam and Emily had led to a belief that I was fine. I hadn't been looking for a last step. My life felt more like a flat plane now that I had a job that would presumably stick around for a while. I wasn't moving up or down anywhere, just forward with the flow of time.

That had become enough for me. After feeling as distraught and angry at the world as I had, just moving forward felt like enough of an accomplishment. I was happy. Could I see ways that I could be happier? Yes, but there was never going to be a time when I couldn't. Not unless my dad came back, I got ahold of a billion dollars, and I got the power to receive any wish I wanted. There was always going to be a way I could be happier, but that didn't mean I wasn't happy now.

What Embry wanted was for me to chase the potential happiness even if it increased my chances of getting hurt all over again, and I didn't know if I could do that. I certainly wasn't robbing a bank to get those billions of dollars. It was too high-risk. If dating some random guy was the equivalent of gaining happiness from a paycheck, then dating Embry was trying to get happiness from that bank robbery. I wasn't stupid enough to do it.


	11. November

**A/N: I'm willing to bet that this chapter is what everyone reading this story has been waiting for. If not, then I'm surprised you're here. Enjoy! And as usual, a huge thank you to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading this chapter.**

 **November 15th, 2009**

Sometime in the past several weeks, fall had arrived in the Pacific Northwest. I hadn't noticed it happening until suddenly it was autumn, and the season hit me with full force.

One of the students from the high school was throwing a huge party for most of the high school students in La Push. I could hear Seth and Al getting ready for it down the hall, laughing together. All the worries Seth had voiced to me back in August had disappeared. At least outwardly.

Seth never acted worried about Al anymore. They were just together and happy. It was as easy as that.

I was happy for them, but I also kind of hated them at the moment. My own life was complete shit in comparison to the idyllic romance they'd managed to create.

This hadn't been like the last time Embry tried to confront me about my feelings and failed. This time we continued speaking, but it couldn't stay the same. We couldn't go back to how it had been before, and that was far more apparent this time than it had been the last. The situation was already imploding in just the way I had expected it to.

I sighed as I read through the texts I had exchanged with Rachel earlier that day.

 **You doing anything tonight?** I'd asked. She'd responded with a negative, as expected, and shockingly, had invited me over.

Rachel rarely left her house anymore. She always used the excuse of needing to get work done. It was convenient that she freelanced from home. It allowed her to be a recluse as much as she wanted and still make the money she and Paul needed to pay off the house. But the work excuse could only hold up so many times before it became clear that there was something larger going on.

These days, I never saw Rachel. It was impossible when she never wanted to go out in public or have anyone over. I was lucky if she answered my text messages on any given day. I couldn't believe she'd taken the initiative to invite me over. There was no way I could turn her down.

It was just after sunset as Seth and Al left for their party. Mom and Charlie sat in front of the TV in the living room, although only Charlie was paying attention to what was happening onscreen.

"I'm going to see Rachel," I announced as I entered the living room.

Mom looked up at me, looking as surprised as I felt.

"That's nice," she said. She was trying to make it sound like this wasn't as big of a deal as it was, like Rachel hadn't been avoiding the world for months. "Have fun."

I nodded at her as I went out the door.

The drive to Forks held more familiarity to me than it had in the past. Once I got to town, I almost headed towards work instead of Paul and Rachel's. I hadn't had to travel there since the housewarming party. That had also been one of the last times I saw Rachel.

When I arrived, the house itself looked the same as it had that night except a little messier. That wasn't to say it looked unkempt. It just wasn't in the state of impeccable cleanliness that Rachel had adamantly kept up when they first moved in. Such a sight should have been a welcome sign that the couple was settling in well and that, though the newness of the place was wearing off, it was becoming more like a home.

I didn't take it that way. Everything I knew about Rachel pointed in a more sinister direction: This house hadn't been the fix to all her problems like she had been desperately hoping, and now she was giving up on it. She hadn't been able to make it mean the things she'd wanted it to mean when they'd moved in.

After I knocked, it took a long time for Rachel to answer. Just as I was about to try again, the door opened, and Rachel stood in front of me. She looked…fine. I felt terrible that I was surprised. She looked well rested and healthy. Aside from a slight look in her eye that hinted at something darker, she could have passed as being her normal self.

She looked me up and down, and I squirmed under her gaze. It was the first time she'd seen me in months, and she was inspecting me as if looking for a fault.

"You're looking well put together then?" she asked once she'd stepped aside to let me into the house.

It sounded judgmental, as if she was judging me when I had yet to say a thing. Such a thing should have been difficult for her to pull off considering the situation.

Without having spoken to her in ages, I could already tell that everything Rachel said tonight was going to be in that tone of voice. I could have pointed out that she was in sweatpants, but something about retaliating that way felt wrong. No matter how mean she was to me, I couldn't forget about how scared some of her recent behavior had left me.

"I don't know," I replied simply. "I don't think this is any different than what I usually wear, so..."

Rachel accepted the answer with a silent nod as she flopped herself down in an armchair. Paul was already sitting in a chair across the room. I stood off to the side for a second and watched them as they each sat in their own half of the living room. The television was on, and Paul showed little awareness of what was happening around him as he stared at the screen.

After hesitating, I settled down on the couch closer to Rachel's chair than Paul's. I felt like I'd become a barrier between them. I didn't like it.

"How's work?" I wasn't sure, but Rachel might have purposefully been making her voice louder than normal to drown out the TV. I glanced at Paul, who was still showing no sign of responding. He would have yelled at anyone else, but I got the impression he had been taking everything Rachel threw at him with little complaint.

I'd never seen this version of Paul, all quiet and non-confrontational. It scared me.

"Work's fine," I answered. Work was actually going better than fine. I enjoyed it. But I didn't get the impression that being positive would endear me to Rachel. If I told her my life was a living hell, I might have gotten the first genuine smile out of her in months. Not because she wished terrible things on me but because she wanted to know that she wasn't the only one feeling upset about her circumstances.

"That's good." There was no genuineness in her answer. Rachel appeared more like a robot going through a step-by-step guide towards creating a conversation, but they couldn't fit the right emotions in to make it feel genuine.

It might not have been smart, but I took the risk to ask, "How's work been for you?"

Rachel struggled more than she had been to keep her smile on her face.

"Work's good," she insisted, her voice too high. "I'm managing to make more money now than I ever have. That's the great thing about freelancing. I can make as much as I want depending on how much time I put into it. And I can do it from anywhere in the world. I've been putting extra hours in, picking up some extra cash. Thought it might be useful in the future."

She cast a quick glance at Paul when she referenced the future. A slight twitch of his hand hinted that he had heard her, but it was a small enough gesture that Rachel wouldn't have picked up on it. There was also a tightness to Paul's grimace that hadn't been there before. I got the impression that Rachel wasn't picking up just a few extra hours.

"What about outside of work?" Rachel continued on with her faux conversation. She was still putting on that high, false voice that grated on my ears. "What's life been like?"

The question emphasized how little I had spoken to Rachel in recent months, and I felt an ache in my stomach. She was one of my oldest friends, and she was becoming a recluse. I felt a sudden desire to drag her outside to see people, to do something besides sit in her house and work.

"Life's fine," I replied, again sticking to brief responses. The less I said, the better, although I thought Rachel might get some twisted delight out of hearing about the shit state of my romantic life. I would have given it to her when she was looking like this, but I couldn't bring myself to talk about Embry in front of Paul. I was too scared to discover what that would lead to.

"That's great," Rachel said too loudly. "Really great. I'm glad. We haven't gotten to talk much. I guess it's the extra hours I've been doing. Less time to talk to anyone."

There was nothing I could do except nod my head a few times. I could have thrown out that I'd been busy too. It was the standard reply to those sorts of comments, but it wouldn't have been accurate. Yes, I had been working, but my schedule hadn't been what was keeping us from talking. That was all on Rachel's end.

"You haven't been doing much except work then?" I tried to keep my voice innocent, as if it were an honest question and not me fishing for a confirmation of what I already knew. There was a flicker on Rachel's face that I thought was a recognition of my intentions, but she was quick to school her features into something fake again.

"Not really." At least she didn't try to pull of an outright lie. "I enjoy my job though, so it's not that bad."

I knew she wasn't lying. Rachel did love her job. She would talk my ear off about topics that went over my head, using vocabulary I had never heard before. She was one of those people who got paid to do what they loved, and I was envious of that. Surely, that was why Rachel had descended so far into her work recently. It was the only thing in her life she was pleased with. It was all she had.

While I was happy that she enjoyed what she was doing, her answer didn't reassure me. Rachel might have loved her job too much.

Paul made eye contact with me, and I could tell that I had hit the nail on the head. He looked so dejected that even I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

Switching the television off, Paul stood from his chair.

"I have to head out for patrol," he explained as he stretched.

Rachel smiled at him, an action that managed to surprise me. It was the first of her smiles that looked real since I had entered the house, and that left me feeling better than I had just seconds before. Paul leaned down to kiss her before leaving, and they exchanged 'I love you's.' It felt rather normal and showed nothing that I thought I should be worried about. I couldn't help but stare at Rachel until Paul was out the door.

Imprinting, I reminded myself. It was strange, and I would never understand how it worked.

"So," I said, trying to start up a conversation again. "How is the new house so far?"

Something about Paul being gone felt freeing. I was still holding out hope that I could get more out of Rachel when he wasn't around. Maybe she would admit to sad feelings that she didn't want Paul to know about. But it was a long shot. The imprinted couples never had any secrets from each other. They were open books, and after what I had just seen, I doubted Paul and Rachel were any different, even now.

"It's nice," Rachel replied. Her voice held the same high-pitched quality that it had had since I arrived. She glanced around at what could be seen of the house from where she sat. It was still largely in the state it had been at the party. Nothing about the decor of the place had changed. The only difference was that there was a bit more dust on the side tables and a few dirty dishes in the sink. It didn't look like a display anymore.

Rachel continued, "This was a good choice for us to get started in. I really do like this house."

I could tell she meant it, but I could also pick up on the sense that she was already ready to move on from the starter house. It's time had ended almost as soon as it had begun.

"It seems nice," I replied for lack of anything better to say. I'd complimented the house all I could when they'd first bought it, and there was nothing new to say to her.

Rachel hummed in response. Her demeanor had softened. Maybe she was getting tired of keeping up a pretense and was allowing herself to relax. Her shoulders didn't appear as rigid as she slumped over and gave up her previous posture. Her smile wasn't as wide, even though it remained, and it didn't appear as strained. Seeing her like this, with her walls not quite as high even if they were still there, was more reassuring than what I had been seeing before. I just wasn't sure why that was. Something about the softening of the lie made me feel better about it.

We sat there in silence for several minutes. I was out of things to say, and Rachel didn't appear inclined to talk. Then a sly grin appeared on her face. One that came out of real, not faked amusement.

"How has Embry been?"

My heart began to thump louder than normal, and my stomach knotted up as I tried to figure out how to respond.

"Embry's fine." This time, it was my own voice that sounded off. Rachel caught it too, her grin turning into a smirk.

"I'm sure," she muttered, knowing that I could hear.

"Nothing is happening," I shot back.

It was too defensive. I'd known that it would sound that way before it was out of my mouth, but once it was out there, there was nothing to be done. With a groan, I reached up to massage my temple.

"Hey," Rachel said in a softer voice. She stood up and moved to sit beside me on the couch instead. Her arm wrapped around my shoulders, and I had to fight against my instinct to shy away.

I didn't want comfort. Accepting comfort meant admitting that something was wrong.

"What is going on then?" she asked. Her voice held none of the faux cheerfulness from earlier, and that should have been a relief. Better for Rachel to sound sad on someone else's behalf than sad on her own. I just wished I didn't have to be the someone else.

I sighed, dropping my head back to rest on the couch behind me. It wasn't the most comfortable position with Rachel's arm still around my shoulders, but it suddenly felt like too much effort to hold my head up.

"I don't know where to begin," I admitted. Suddenly, I felt receptive to talking about Embry. There was this weight that must have always been there but was just becoming apparent. I hadn't talked about this with anyone. Seth and Joselyn had both tried several times, but I avoided the topic. Seth had become so engrossed in his own relationship that it was easy to steer his attention away from me. Joselyn was busy in Port Angeles, and although I still saw her as much as possible, we did far more talking on the phone, where it was easier to act like everything was fine and dandy.

I knew she still saw Embry every day, and he must have been putting on a better show than I ever would have managed. Joselyn never voiced any speculation that something was up with him.

In fact, the only person Embry seemed to be showing his dejectedness to was me.

Jake had to know that something was going on between us because it had been so long since I'd patrolled with Embry that it had to be purposeful. Yet none of the guys acted like they had a clue, and they weren't that good of actors. Somehow, nothing that had happened between Embry and me was widely known information. I hadn't thought that was possible in the pack. We didn't have secrets unless they were with us and us only. Even those were nearly impossible to maintain, and some were more capable of it than others.

Rachel looked at me expectantly, and it occurred to me that this was the most excitement she'd had in ages. Not much new could happen if she was locking herself away every day. I could tell by the way she was hanging off my every word that she craved new information.

While I hated that this was happening around my problems, I couldn't find it in me to deny her. Not when she had begun to appear animated.

"We kissed," I admitted, voice trembling with the words.

Rachel sucked in a sharp breath and held it, eyes wide as she stared at me. Her arm around my shoulder meant that she was already close, but she leaned in closer as she gaped. I nudged her side with my elbow, snapping her back to attention, and she leaned back, arm withdrawing.

"Oh."

I wasn't sure what reaction I had been expecting, but it wasn't that. Rachel was suddenly very animated as she watched me analytically. I shifted under her gaze. Unsure what else to say, all I could think to do was shrug.

"But you're not…?"

"No," I informed her. My throat felt like it was closing up, and my eyes began to sting. "We're not."

She readjusted herself so that she was crowding into my personal space.

"What happened then?"

So I told the story for the first time. It was hard to pick and choose what Rachel needed to hear and what she didn't. Parts of it she already knew, or she knew Embry and I well enough to have guessed, but I filled in the blanks, letting her know about the kiss and the confrontations and my stubborn refusal to take things further.

Rachel listened with rapt attention, never taking her eyes off me. When I was done, I stared down at the floor, waiting for her response. I felt wide open and vulnerable, like I had taken off my armor and left myself exposed to an enemy attack.

"Leah." I closed my eyes as I heard the sympathy in Rachel's voice. I didn't want sympathy or sadness. If I wanted any reaction at all, it was solidarity. I wanted someone to let me know that my decision was valid, that I had a point. The exact opposite of what Embry had said to me.

"Don't," I warned her. "Don't tell me I'm stupid or that I'm overreacting. I don't want to hear it."

There was a moment of tense silence. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel her gaze on me. Then she sighed and shifted around in her seat before answering.

"That wasn't what I was going to say."

I opened my eyes to lift an eyebrow in her direction.

"I wasn't," she insisted. "Not exactly. I think you should be with Embry. I'm not denying that, but you have to make your own decision. Nothing good will come out of ignoring your own beliefs or whatever. If you don't think you can date him, then you can't."

We fell into a long silence before I worked up the courage to ask a question.

"How do you do it?"

My voice startled Rachel; she looked at me questioningly.

"Be with Paul when it's not what you imagined you'd be doing," I explained. "It's not what you pictured when you thought about the future, and here you are, living in Forks when you'd rather be anywhere else. Is it worth it?"

It was the most direct I had been with Rachel since I'd arrived. Opening up to her about Embry made me think it was justified. And she didn't shut herself away like she would have if I'd brought up the topic earlier. Instead, she looked contemplative as she took a moment to think before answering.

"My life isn't perfect," she said slowly. "There's some stuff I wish was different and some stuff I hate. But I have to remind myself that it has to be like that. Life can't be perfect, imprint or no imprint. Don't think I'm some well-adjusted person who's at peace with life. Some days it's easier to remind myself of all that inspirational shit than it is on other days, but I do believe it, I think. Most of the time."

"You wouldn't be happier in Seattle or somewhere farther away?"

Rachel shrugged. "I don't think I would be, actually. I would have been years ago before Paul. These days, no. If I left today and went to Seattle, I'd be miserable there too knowing that I was away from Paul. My dream is living in Seattle _with_ Paul. If I'm missing either of those things, then it's not right.

"I do want to be here in Forks, Leah. In a way. Not for Forks but for other reasons. And it's not just Paul really. I appreciate being around my family and around you and around everyone else a lot more than I did when I first left for college. Back then I wasn't thinking of anything but getting away. My family and friends would always be here, so there was no point in missing them. I realize that's not true anymore, so going away doesn't feel as picture perfect of an idea as it used to."

"So you don't want to move?" It was difficult for me to believe when it contradicted everything I had believed about Rachel for years.

She looked torn as she debated her answer, like she wasn't entirely sure herself.

"I do," she admitted. "I know there are downsides, but I still think it's worth it when we can do it. And I mean 'we.' I'm not going without Paul because that's definitely not worth it. I want to be with him. I'm happy with him. Happy enough that I've stuck around here this long. You think I'd have done that if I didn't want to be here?"

"You guys were hardly talking, Rachel."

She scoffed at me. The fond smile that formed on her lips was surprising.

"That was one night you saw. We're fine. I swear. Not perfect, but fine. Whatever that means. Paul's frustrated with me; I know he is. He wants me to be happy, and it makes him angry that I'm not as happy as he thinks I should be. Sometimes his anger winds up getting directed at me, but not usually. He's madder at himself than anything. Blames himself for us being stuck here, and I have to remind him that I don't blame him. It's draining sometimes. It leads to arguing, and everything, but we really are fine. We're always going to fight about something. You've met Paul. You've met me. It doesn't change the fact that we love each other and are going to be fine."

I stared at her.

"You don't seem fine," I said bluntly. Instead of acting offended like I had been sure she would, Rachel laughed.

"Maybe I'm not great," she allowed, "but you shouldn't worry about me, Leah. It'll all be fine in the end. We have to think that way to stop going crazy, don't we? All I can do is try to make myself feel better in whatever way I can. That's why I asked you to come over. I had the realization that I have to do something to stop myself from sinking into nothing but negative thoughts."

"What made you finally do it?"

There was a moment of hesitation before she said, "I went to see a therapist a couple of days ago. She diagnosed me with depression."

My body froze. The diagnosis itself wasn't surprising after the previous year, but Rachel having already talked to someone caught me by surprise. She was so stubborn.

"I think I've been like this for a long time," she continued. "It's been a problem since I was younger. It's just that it got worse when I kept doing things that were supposed to make me happy, yet none of the feelings changed. I was running out of perfect scenarios that would fix everything. And it became harder to ignore the bad thoughts in my head.

"Paul wouldn't put up with it anymore either. He all but forced me to the therapist's office."

It was hard to imagine someone as hard-headed as Rachel admitting that she needed help and going to the office. I didn't know whether her agreement should have been attributed to herself or Paul's influence over her as his imprint, but I hoped it was herself.

"Did it go well?"

Rachel sighed, shifting to pull her legs underneath her. "It went better than I expected. Nothing about therapy is sunshine and butterflies, but I do feel better after going. If I can feel any better after only the first time, then I hope it helps. Sometimes I get discouraged though, and I start to think that getting my hopes up is stupid and I'll only be disappointed."

"Don't say that," I commanded. "It's not stupid." Part of me thought I was being a hypocrite telling someone that they shouldn't be negative. I regularly expected the worst outcome, and I acknowledged it. There were times, though, where I thought good things were possible, and this was one of them. As hard as it might have been for some to believe, I knew Rachel would get better with help. This was Rachel Black, one of only two people I knew who had risen above the plain old talk and gotten off the reservation. If she could do that, then she could do anything.

She smiled at me even though my words hadn't made a lasting impact. I knew Paul had to be telling her the same thing, but she had to change her views herself before it would make a difference. In time, Rachel would see that things were okay. There was already a glimmer of that old confidence inside of her, and she would build it up again in time.

"Thanks, Leah." She reached over to squeeze my hand before dropping it. "But that's enough about my problems." I could tell that she was eager to shift the focus away from herself. "Let's talk about you and Embry."

She leveled me with a stern gaze that caused me to drop my eyes away from her. The determination that had only been hinted at before was now apparent in the way she watched me. She was going to say what she wanted to say, and it wasn't going to be something I wanted to hear.

"You need to let yourself feel, Leah. Try to be with him. It's what you want."

"Are you mimicking your therapist?" I wasn't sure if I meant it as a joke or a real question. I wasn't even sure if it was an appropriate comment. All I knew was that I wanted out of this, and my brain wasn't letting me think straight.

"No, that was me. My problems aren't of the romance variety." Her expression turned thoughtful. "Although therapy might do you good. After yesterday, I'm starting to think that therapy is good for everyone. There's no shame in it."

There wasn't. I knew that. But I thought about sitting in a room with a stranger and opening up, and all I could do was recoil in fear. There was no way Rachel was going to convince me to do it. I especially wasn't going to sit in there and talk about my feelings for Embry with anyone.

And how would therapy work when I had to cut out the huge portion of my life that was tied up in the supernatural? Nothing else would make sense without it. I wasn't sure I could benefit from therapy if I weren't willing to open up on that level, but any therapist was certain to take such a story as a sign of mental illness. I wouldn't blame them. It was the rational response unless you could see someone phase with your own eyes.

Rachel sensed that her suggestion was a dead end, and she switched paths.

"When was the last time you talked to him?"

"Yesterday. He was at Jake's when I showed up, but he left almost as soon as I got there."

Rachel shook her head. I didn't like the way she looked at me with pity, no matter how good her intentions may have been.

"You two have really made a mess of things, haven't you?"

I glared at her. "I haven't made any mess. I just want things to stay the way they were when they weren't this complicated. Embry's the one who wants to change everything. That's the problem."

"You can put the blame on Embry all you want, but at least he's not trying to bottle everything up like you are, Leah. Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I'm perfect. God knows that I'm not always the most open of people when it comes to touchy-feely stuff either. I probably never would have dated Paul if it weren't for the imprint. I was too worried about my career to give a thought to anything else then, and if he hadn't just shown up like that," she snapped her fingers, "I doubt I'd be dating anyone.

"But at least I didn't keep denying it when Paul was right there. I accepted it."

"You can't possibly compare me and Embry to you and Paul," I said in disbelief. "You're an imprint. That's so different. You have this cosmic stamp of approval on your relationship. You're one hundred percent guaranteed to work. Embry and I can't have that."

Rachel sighed and shrugged it off. "Sometimes I wonder if imprints are only such a guaranteed success because both people in the imprint believe they are. The power of suggestion, right? If you think that fate has guaranteed you a happy ending, then you're going to work for a happy ending, and you'll get it."

"I think you're the only imprint who thinks that way."

"Emily thinks imprinting is this picture perfect guarantee, which is a load of shit. Nothing can make life look like a fairy tale. She has to think that way though. It's how she stops herself from feeling guilty about what happened with you. You know that. If imprinting isn't this perfect thing, then she'll blame herself. She's justified it the way she needs to in her own mind.

"I think Kim thinks like Emily does. She's just not as keen on forcing people to view things the way she does. She's fine staying in her own business. I've always admired that about her. Anyway, it makes sense, I guess, that she would think about imprinting like that. Her and Jared have had the easiest imprint of all of us.

"Then there's Claire, who's too young to view any relationship as anything other than perfect. Nessie I'm not sure about. She's so analytical that I have a difficult time believing that she thinks imprinting has no flaws. Last time I talked to her, she was explaining why mermaids are implausible in real life. I don't think we have to worry about her thinking life is a fairy tale."

I'd heard the same speech that Rachel was talking about. Nessie had developed a thing for mermaids, but she insisted on reminding everyone that they were only make believe. Despite being half vampire, Nessie was as skeptical as they came about the existence of supernatural creatures that she hadn't met. People with tails instead of feet was just too much for her rational mind to take.

"Needless to say," Rachel continued, "I think Emily and Kim are completely wrong. I'm thankful Paul imprinted on me. I'm happy with him, and I do think we're meant to be together. But our relationship isn't perfect. No one can claim that it is, imprint or no imprint. We're as likely to fight as anyone else, actually probably more than most people. And if I stopped giving a shit, our relationship would go down the drain like any other relationship would. We don't get a free pass from having to deal with the hard stuff."

"But you still know that you'll always be with Paul." I had no doubt in my mind that she believed it after listening to her talk.

"I can't say I one hundred percent definitively do actually. There's always going to be shit that I didn't see coming, and something could screw us up. I'm not like Alice; I can't see the future. Even her visions change, don't they? They're not set in stone.

"What I do know is that I want to be with Paul, and I know he wants to be with me. We're going to do everything we can to make it work. That's all we can do. You and Embry aren't that different from Paul and me. I'm thankful for the imprint because it showed me who I needed to be with, but that's the only credit I'll give it. Paul and I have done everything else ourselves."

My entire body felt like it was shaking, and for once, it wasn't because I was about to phase. It was hard to take in normal breaths.

Rachel placed a hand on my shoulder, watching me with concern. "Leah, you okay?"

All I could do was shake my head. I hadn't been okay since Embry kissed me. I hadn't been okay since I realized I was developing feelings for him. Hell, I might not have been okay before I'd consciously realized that I was falling for Embry Call.

"Shit, Rachel. I want to pretend like everything's fine, but I'm scared as fuck."

As soon as I said it, a bit of the weight that had been resting on my shoulders lifted. I could breathe a bit easier. It was amazing. Just from saying out loud what I had been too frightened to even think before.

"I want to be fine," I continued, unable to stop now that I had started. Rachel listened, hand still resting on my shoulder. "In so many ways, I'm past what happened with Sam and Emily. I'm over it. But there's still this part of me that thinks that dating another wolf is the worst idea imaginable. And Sam's half brother at that. There are so many ways this could go horribly, horribly wrong, and how can I not think about them?"

"It's hard," Rachel said. "I have the same problem except I obsess over what will happen if I never get back out of here. But you see what that's been doing to me, right? I'm making myself even more miserable by acting like I should do nothing while I'm here. Instead, I should be trying to enjoy it. I didn't think that way until recently, but it's kind of the same thing, right? I'm avoiding everything to do with Forks and La Push because I'm scared it will only make me sadder. You're avoiding having a relationship with Embry because you're scared how it'll end.

"But if you never date Embry in the first place, then you can't even be happy at all. It's a loss no matter how you look at it. If you admit your feelings and try being with him, then at least you have a chance of winning the happy ending lottery."

Fucking hell. It made sense, and I wanted to curse everything for that. Just when I was starting to believe that the universe didn't hate my guts.

But then, maybe it didn't and this was the universe's way of giving me something good in life, but I was fucking it up. I hadn't given myself much of an opportunity to consider it in that light before. Even though I'd been telling myself differently, I hadn't stopped seeing myself as doomed to a life of misery. Everything that had happened recently was more than enough proof of that.

"I need to talk to him."

The statement held so much weight. I had said things in the past that had felt important, but nothing had made me feel so simultaneously light and weighed down at the same time. This felt like it could be the most life-changing thing I'd ever done.

Rachel didn't hold any of my trepidation, only excitement. It was the closest I had seen her to what one might consider peppy. I half expected her to start jumping up and down and clapping her hands.

"Go," she urged, trying to push me off the couch. "Go find him and talk to him."

"What?" I replied, surprised at her urgency. I stood up to stop her assault, but I didn't make a move to leave. "You're just going to kick me out in the middle of a conversation?"

"We can talk later." She stood up too. "You have to talk to Embry now. Before you lose your nerve."

"Who said anything about nerve? Rachel, I still don't know if I actually want to talk to him."

Rachel wheeled me around and gripped each of my shoulders tightly, forcing me to make eye contact with her.

"Listen, Leah. You want to talk to Embry. You're scared shitless about it, but that's not the same thing as not wanting to do it. Actually, I think how terrified you are shows you how much you want it."

As she stood there, staring me down, it hit me that this was going to happen. Even if I didn't do it tonight, it would happen in the future, and putting it off would only make it harder. If I didn't do it at all, then the situation between Embry and me would get worse and worse until it was beyond repair. That was what I was setting myself up for by acting like there was any possibility of things returning to what they had once been.

And if the current situation or potential happiness or heartbreak were my only options, why not gamble instead of taking the safer path that would hurt me anyway?

"I have to talk to Embry," I said, causing a smile to break out on Rachel's face.

"Yes, you do," she agreed.

I uttered a few choice words, unable to believe that this was happening. I was going to do it. Rachel's hands fell from my shoulders as I backed away, reeling.

"I have to go." I wasn't sure how audible my words were to Rachel's ears. It was like I was on a different plane of existence.

I was in another world where everything was blurry except the clear path I needed to follow. There was no choice in the matter anymore. I'd already made up my mind. I wasn't sure how long the drive would last, but I felt the overwhelming need to get to Embry as fast as possible. There was no way to slow it down, and I had a feeling it wouldn't stop until I'd completed my mission.

"Go," Rachel urged, and that was the last prompting I needed to hurry out of the house and into the woods. I phased quickly, hardly able to stop and assess that there was no one else inside my head. I knew Paul was on patrol, and he must have been with another guy from his pack. No one from our pack was there to discover what I was doing.

I savored the freedom that gave me with my thoughts. There wasn't much of a reason to conceal anything at this point anyway, but I appreciated the few extra minutes that allowed me to process what I was about to do.

There was no way of knowing where Embry was when I set off from Forks. I headed towards La Push, knowing that was my best bet, but I didn't have any clearer directions than that. When I neared the old treaty line, I began sniffing, hoping to catch a whiff of Embry's familiar scent that might happen to be around here. It wouldn't have been far-fetched since we ran the treaty line often on patrols, although I had no way of knowing how fresh anything I happened to stumble upon would be.

But I didn't stumble upon anything strong enough to be recent. Instead, I kept going in the direction of his house, hoping, perhaps foolishly, that he would be there. There were lights on when I got there. That was the first thing I noticed. I phased back and hurriedly dressed. I peeked through the trees, looking for anyone walking around this area of town. I saw no one.

If Embry was inside, he had noticed my presence by now. I did my best to search for any sign that he was here. There was someone inside. I'd known that as soon as I arrived, but it took longer for me to be sure that there were two people and one of them was definitely Embry.

Seeing that no one was coming toward the house, I stepped out of the woods just as Embry came out the front door. I froze. It had felt much different when my plans were still in the future, but now, faced with Embry, the reality of what I was about to do enveloped me.

With a deep breath, I took another step forward, but before I could get much further, Embry was in front of me. I watched his face closely, able to make out all the emotions even though the darkness pushed in against us.

"Hi," I attempted to say, but it came out unintelligible. Embry responded all the same, confusion in his voice.

"This is sudden," he said. "Why are you here?"

I felt a small stab of pain in my stomach. Not too long ago, that question would never have been necessary to ask. But I hadn't been to Embry's house in a couple of months.

"Can we talk?" I motioned towards the woods with my head, asking silently for him to follow me. With his mother inside, I felt strange talking about this in the openness of the yard. What if she glanced out the window? Beyond the treeline, we would have more privacy. None of the usual patrols came close enough to Embry's house for the guys to stumble upon us.

Embry nodded and followed me into the trees. My senses were still on high alert. I could see and hear everything in the forest almost as if it were still daylight. Once I was far enough in that Embry's house wasn't readily visible through the trees, I stopped.

I could feel Embry behind me, watching me closely, and it was difficult to find the courage to turn around. Suddenly, the heightened senses that I had been directing towards my surroundings narrowed in on Embry and nothing else. He was watching me with curiosity and a hint of fear. I hated knowing why that last one was there.

"You wanted to talk," Embry said, breaking me out of my dazed thoughts.

"Right." I cleared my throat, hoping the few seconds would be enough to get my thoughts together. It wasn't. "I went to see Rachel."

I saw Embry's eyes widen at that. Rachel's recent reclusiveness wasn't a secret. It was doubtful that Embry had seen her since I had before tonight. His expression showed an interest in Rachel's well-being that I found frustrating in the moment. Talking about Rachel wasn't why I was here, and it would do nothing but distract me from my mission.

"She kind of...knocked some sense into me."

Embry's gaze on me always felt heavy, like he was looking at me more intently than anyone else did. Right now it felt even heavier. I could have been driven down into the ground with the force of it.

Just saying that one sentence had felt like a confession. I struggled to decide where to go from there. I snuck a glance up at Embry's face, hoping to see if he planned to say something in response to what I'd already told him. But he was just watching me and waiting. I had no choice but to say it.

"I really like you."

There was a feeling between us that was both new and familiar. The four words felt remarkably harmless once they were out there between us. I'd taken the step I'd been too afraid to take, and in those seconds where I waited for Embry to take another step to meet me, it felt like my entire body was trembling in anticipation.

He stepped forward, and I felt a new kind of tension throughout my body. He took one of my hands in his own, and the last vestiges of resistance dissipated.

"What did Rachel say?" Embry asked.

I wanted to cuss Rachel out for taking Embry's attention somewhere else without even being there, and I probably would have if she had been in front of me.

"Is that important right now?" I felt confident. The initial hurdle had been the hardest, and now I felt excited but not scared. I knew what the outcome of this would be, and it finally didn't feel like it was unattainable or unrealistic.

Embry shrugged, taking a moment before he answered my question.

"I couldn't say anything that would convince you to take the chance. What was the secret?"

I chanced taking a step closer to him, taking his other hand in mine.

"I guess Rachel helped me realize that imprinting doesn't mean a perfect relationship. We're all just flailing along trying to make relationships work. You're probably the best person to flail along with, Call."

"Probably?" He pretended to pout, and I struggled to keep the grin on my face from becoming a full-fledged smile.

"I'll have to get back to you after I've tested the theory."

We were standing close enough that I could feel his breath. Unlike the last time we had kissed, I didn't feel any of the anxiety that had been consumed me. I just felt warmth and longing.

"I plan to," Embry muttered right before his lips met mine.

This kiss lasted far longer than our last. I didn't get the same urge to run or hide. Instead, I felt the opposite. Every cell in my body was screaming to stay as close to Embry as I could, even as his body pressed firmly against mine. I'd lost all sense of whatever else was happening around us.

 **A/N: I hope that satisfied everyone. There's one more chapter of the story left, and I plan to post it within the next several days. I'll talk a bit more about a fourth Forever story in an author's note on that chapter.**


	12. December

**A/N: Here's the final chapter! Thank you again to Jezebel Jai-Braxlin for beta reading this story. I hope you all enjoyed it!**

 **December 26th, 2009**

The past month had been a whirlwind. It was strange having a boyfriend after several years that had included only one date. It was taking a lot of adjustment, but it was less than I would have imagined. Something about Embry made dating him easy. There wasn't much to worry about.

I'd wondered what it would be like to date another wolf and Sam's half brother to boot, but whenever I brought up the half brother thing, Embry would only roll his eyes. Sam never even mentioned it. I actually thought he was happy that Embry and I were together. While I would have disregarded any negative reaction from him anyway, it felt nice knowing that everyone appeared to be behind us.

For the first time in a long time, I felt happy. This wasn't the satisfaction I had felt where I'd been okay with life but not particularly thrilled with it. Things were genuinely good, and I was reveling in it.

In fact, I was so happy that I managed to overlook the few things left in my life that weren't as shiny and melodious. Namely, I forgot to worry about Rachel.

It was difficult to remind myself that I was supposed to worry after that night when she had spoken like things were getting better. That image of a happy Rachel had replaced the sad Rachel that had previously dominated my thoughts, and it was scary how easy it was for me to forget that, of course, Rachel wasn't better just like that. She was still seeing a therapist, still battling depression.

But she was talking to me again and making an effort to get out of the house and do things. Her smiles looked less fake, and it was hard to remember that they could be fake at all.

I forgot.

It was stupid and terrible of me, but I forgot.

Then I showed up at her house one day to find a woman who did not match the happy image in my mind. At first, I still tried to rationalize it. Everything was fine; it was just that everyone has bad days.

This was different though, and it took several minutes before it became obvious that this wasn't just a case of a bad day. Something was seriously wrong. Rachel had collapsed back onto the couch after letting me in. A blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, and it looked like she'd created a nest for herself in the living room. Her eyes were red-rimmed, a result of a long stint of crying that wasn't recent.

Stepping cautiously into the living room, I said softly, "Rachel, you okay?"

The question felt loaded. There was no telling what answer I was going to get, but I knew that anything I wanted to hear would be a lie.

"I got offered a job."

Those weren't the words I had been expecting. It came so out of left field that I stood there in a stunned silence long enough to make myself look stupid. Rachel turned away from me.

"What do you mean?" I managed to ask. I stepped into the room, taking a seat in one of the chairs that flanked the couch. Rachel still faced away from me. "What kind of job?"

Rachel freelanced, so in a way, she was always getting jobs. They were short-term commitments that she finished and was done with. All of the work happened in her own home. I had a feeling that wasn't the sort of job she was telling me about.

It took a while for Rachel to bother with a reply, and when one came, it was muffled by the pillow she had buried her face in.

"It's in Seattle."

I'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I was unsurprised when I heard the news. Of course. Seattle was the setting for Rachel's dream life, but she couldn't go when Paul had to stay near La Push. Or at least, that had been Rachel's own line of thought until now.

I had a feeling that was beginning to break down.

"I didn't mean to apply for it," Rachel continued. I hadn't asked her to explain herself, and she wasn't looking at me for my reaction. The guilt that I heard in her voice had to be coming from inside herself and only making her believe that I didn't approve.

Did I approve? I wasn't sure. Paul and Rachel's situation had been complicated for a while. Maybe it had been complicated since the imprint.

Ultimately, this was Rachel's decision, and I wasn't going to tell her which answer was the right one. I couldn't do that.

But this did feel sudden, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was a bad idea for Rachel to plan for a huge move like this unless she had thought about it. I had to know that this was something she had thought about all the possible consequences to and still wanted to do.

"When did you find out?"

Rachel turned her head so that her face was no longer covered, but she made no move to sit back up. She stared out at the living room instead of at me.

"Earlier today. After Paul left for work. He doesn't know yet."

I'd figured as much. There was no definitive sign that Paul hadn't known, but I could just tell that Rachel hadn't had that conversation yet. Something told me he wouldn't be at work if they'd begun discussing it.

"What are you going to do?"

It was such a shit question. One I despised being asked in similar situations. It was easy to imagine the turmoil going on inside Rachel, and there was no answer to this problem that didn't lead to someone feeling hurt or unhappy. Nothing Rachel did would be perfect. She wouldn't have a good answer until she'd already made a decision.

Sure enough, when her answer came it was, "I don't know."

I didn't say anything to her after that. I had no advice to give. Anything that came out of my mouth would be a false reassurance. I didn't know if everything would be okay. Rachel herself had admitted that no one could see the future. It was useless pretending like there was some perfect way that things could fall into place and make everyone happy. I wouldn't help Rachel by pretending, and I knew she would never stand for that shit anyway. She always wanted the truth. No matter how difficult it was to take.

When I left Rachel that day, she was no better off than when I had shown up. I liked to think that just being there was helpful. Maybe I'd reminded her that she had a friend she could lean on and that would ease some of the distraught thoughts that were sure to plague her for the foreseeable future. But she was still upset, and she would be upset until she sorted the mess out.

I was halfway to Embry's house before I realized where I was heading. There didn't need to be any thought anymore. I'd taken to showing up whenever I wanted and knowing that Embry would be happy to see me.

Tiffany smiled at me when she opened the door. Of all the people who had been happy when Embry and I announced that we were together, Tiffany had been the most visibly excited. At one point, she'd started crying, and I would have bolted if Embry hadn't placed a hand on my knee. It still caught me by surprise how much she seemed to like me, but at least I understood it a bit more now that I was dating her son.

"Is Embry here?"

Tiffany nodded in a silent yes as she let me inside the house. She motioned towards Embry's door and gave me one last smile before turning back to whatever it was that had been occupying her attention before I'd shown up. I was too focused on seeing Embry to pay any attention.

His bedroom door was closed, and I tapped impatiently against the wood until he opened it. It was stupid really. He'd known I was in the house since I'd gotten there. The least he could have done was go ahead and open the door.

Now that Embry was on winter break from school, we had a lot more time to spend together than we'd had at the beginning of our relationship. Before, I'd come over after work to find his bed littered with textbooks as he tried to study. The past couple of weeks, I had come over to find him looking like he'd just woken up.

"Did I interrupt your beauty sleep again?"

Embry mumbled a reply, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He pulled the blankets on his bed back up around his waist, leaning back so he was sitting against the headboard and pillows. I mimicked him, sinking into the warmth that Embry had already created. I burrowed into the blankets, bringing them up to my shoulders before I snuggled into Embry's side.

There wasn't a day that went by that I wasn't ecstatic that I got to do things like this. I could press myself into Embry's side and not feel self-conscious or worry about revealing my feelings. Because all of that was out in the open. He knew. It felt freeing.

"I was just visiting Rachel," I said after we'd spent ten minutes laying there in silence. We always had to take some time to enjoy each other's presence during moments like this. I hoped I never stopped wanting to relish the feeling of Embry being beside me.

He hummed in acknowledgment, which I took as encouragement to continue with my story.

"She got accepted for this job. In Seattle. When I left, she hadn't told Paul." I contorted myself so that I could look at the clock that sat on the bedside table behind me. "But I imagine he knows by now."

From anyone else, I would have expected a reaction: a derisive snort, an exclamation of surprise. But Embry offered none of that. He continued to lay there silently with his usual look of thoughtfulness.

Sometimes, I could let him stay like that. He would drift off into his own world, and I would find ways to pass the time until he was ready to come back and share what was on his mind. Today, I didn't want the silence.

"When I got there, she looked so sad. Worse than I'd seen her in months. I didn't know what to do."

Embry sighed, running a hand down my side and causing goosebumps to erupt along my skin.

"Sometimes there's nothing you can do."

That was what my own head had already been telling me. It wasn't what I had wanted to hear from someone else. It kind of scared me, actually, how much I had come to rely on Embry's advice. There would always be things we disagreed on and ways that I thought he was wrong, but the way he put so much thought into everything made me want to take every word he said seriously. If Embry thought there was nothing to be done, then it was hard for me to imagine that he was wrong.

Tracing shapes along Embry's chest, I said, "Do you think an imprint can work long distance?"

Embry didn't try to argue that Rachel might not leave. I thought we both knew that she would take the job. It was the Rachel Black thing to do.

"Yes, I do," Embry said. I pulled away from him enough to prop myself up on my elbows and look him in the eyes.

"Really?" I asked in disbelief. "Even with the pull they feel? You think Paul will be able to deal with being away from her?"

Embry shrugged. He ran his fingers along my arm, and I had to fight to not become distracted.

"Of course it'll be hard for him," Embry said. "But not impossible. Plenty of people have successful long distance relationships, and at least they'd be doing it in 2009 when we have computers and stuff. It wouldn't be ideal, but it's not impossible."

"I just don't want it to become a huge problem for them."

Embry dropped a quick kiss onto my forehead. "They'll be okay. They're imprints. This isn't going to break them up no matter what Rachel chooses. If she goes to Seattle—and we both know she probably will—then Paul's going to be pissed as fuck for a long ass time, but they're not going to break up. Hell, Rachel could run off to China, and they still wouldn't break up."

As Embry spoke, I could feel that what he said was true. For all my pessimism and worry, it was hard to image Paul and Rachel ending things or even letting this distance them from each other. Despite being the least nauseating of the imprinted couples, their bond was strong, a fact that had only been proven more to me over the past couple of months as I worked on talking to Rachel more often.

She wanted to escape La Push and Forks, not her boyfriend, and I knew that Paul wouldn't forget that no matter how upset he was that she was leaving.

"They'll be okay," I muttered. I laid back down, resting my head on Embry's chest and continuing to trace shapes across it. "Rachel will be okay."

Embry hummed in agreement before we fell back into silence. My mind was calmer, and the silence didn't feel as suffocating as it had minutes ago. Now it felt nice. I focused on how Embry's presence felt, sinking into him.

"It's kind of interesting, isn't it?"

I could tell right away that Embry was still talking about Paul and Rachel. This was going to be another one of his thoughts on imprinting, a subject that he hadn't bothered to bring up to me for a while. It felt strange to discuss imprinting when we were two unimprinted wolves who were together. For me, it raised too many worries about what exactly our relationship meant in the grand scheme of things.

"What's interesting?" I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Truth be told, I was curious about what Embry had gotten from this whole thing, but I was also worried about hearing something that would leave me feeling upset all over again.

"How different the imprint can work depending on the people. I think we want to box it in as being this one sort of thing, but it's not, is it? It's as individual as any other relationship. Rachel loves Paul, but you know she's always been about her career more than anything else. She knew what she wanted to do when she was, like, ten. She's not out there vying for CEO or anything, but she's still determined. She was always going to be someone to take a great job opportunity when she got it. Any relationship was going to have to adapt to that or that was the end of it.

"You remember when she was in high school and broke up with that one guy because he made a joke about being scared that Rachel would make more money than him one day? She takes that shit seriously. There was no way she was going to wait in La Push forever. To be honest, I'm surprised she's still here."

The thing was, I was too. When Paul had first imprinted, I'd been beyond shocked that it was on Rachel of all people. Surely there was no way even an imprint could make her stick around, but it had. For a little while. It had been hard to wrap my mind around for such a long time. Eventually, I'd had to accept it because it was what was happening right in front of my eyes. Over time, I'd stopped listening to the part of my brain that had always known that Rachel would have to escape someday. She hated it here. She had since we were kids.

And Rachel loved Paul, but she was always one to put herself before anyone else. I'd never imagined a romantic partner would be capable of changing that, but I had taken it for granted that imprinting overrode any natural inclinations of a person. Surely, as an imprint, Rachel had to be so sickeningly in love that she would sacrifice anything for her significant other.

I had been wrong. She was still Rachel, and she still viewed and dealt with relationships the way she always had. Maybe she'd been lying to herself for a while too, forcing herself to believe what she was "supposed" to think as an imprint. Now that was falling through the cracks, and she was still Rachel at the end of the day.

"You think Paul and Rachel's imprint is different?" I asked Embry.

He shook his head, although he looked conflicted seconds later. "I think it is different in that it involves two people that are way different than anyone else who's imprinted. Rachel and Paul are Rachel and Paul, not Sam and Emily and not Jared and Kim. Their relationship _has_ to be different. I don't know why we have this stupid idea that imprinting creates some cookie cutter fairy-tale romance."

"Fairy-tale romances always look the same, Embry."

"Exactly, but not real life ones. And this is real life. No matter how much we build up imprinting as this supernatural force, it's happening in the real world. No one's going to have a happy ending because the only ending we get is death. Things don't get to cut off when things are happy enough to satisfy everyone. Imprinting can't take away Rachel's Rachel-ness and make her start acting like someone different."

That thought was oddly comforting. I thought about the Rachel I'd known my whole life, the one who was exactly as Embry described her. It was true that she would have taken this job in a heartbeat. Despite Embry's assurances, I couldn't help myself from thinking that the fact she was concerned about Paul's feelings at all was a sign that something within her had changed. Something, but not enough to make her a different person. She cared about him more than she'd cared about the boy she had dumped in high school without regret over a careless joke.

But the imprint couldn't change the core part of her, the part of her who found her job to be the most important aspect of her life. Rachel loved Paul, and she wanted to consider him, but I could never fault her for putting herself first. If I held that against her, it would be like trying to force Rachel to be someone who wasn't Rachel.

Paul should get that too, and hopefully it would lessen the blow of the fall out I knew was coming. Rachel wouldn't be Rachel if she didn't care about her career enough to go all the way to Seattle, Paul or no Paul.

"Was Emily always like she is with relationships?"

The question threw me because I hadn't been expecting it. Emily had been the furthest thing from my mind. But I realized what Embry was getting at. He was still exploring the idea of whether or not imprinting changed the imprint herself. With Nessie and Claire both so young, Emily and Kim were the only two people to compare Rachel to. We didn't know Ethan's imprint well enough, and besides, she'd only too recently become an imprint, having been told the truth about Ethan only a month prior.

I couldn't provide an answer when it came to Kim. I'd only known of her existence in a passive way before she was an imprint. But Emily I'd known inside and out before Sam had set eyes on her.

"She was always a huge romantic, if that's what you mean. When we were younger, she didn't date much, but she used to talk about her dream relationship and stuff like that. She always talked like she expected The One to show up one day, and she would know it was him."

Embry looked satisfied with the answer. His hypothesis was being proven correct as far as he was concerned.

"And when she became the first imprint we all knew, she also became the model," he pointed out. "It's not fair to compare all the imprints to the first one as if they're supposed to be the same."

I would agree with him but not enough to vocally stand behind him against the others. Everything he said made sense to me, but I wasn't sure how well it would go over with the guys as a whole. That wasn't a fight I felt strongly enough about to get in the ring for.

"They'll be fine," I muttered to myself, thinking again of Rachel and Paul. Embry ran a comforting hand down my back, and I shivered. That was enough to distract me from the worry that could have consumed me if I had let it.

"They will," he echoed. "Remember Ethan? Erica? You remember how happy Ethan was when he talked to her more and found out that she was as turned off by the idea of having kids as he was? The idea of it drove Sam crazy. He was trying to stay out of it because he knows it's not his business, but it bothers him because it's not how he thinks an imprint should be. Everyone's caught up in this false idea that Sam and Emily are supposed to be a model for the rest of us. But they're not.

"Paul and Rachel are their own people, just like Ethan and Erica and just like Sam and Emily."

I nodded, knowing he was right. Honestly, it was the most comforting thing he had said so far. After hearing it, I didn't want to be someone who tried to measure Paul and Rachel's happiness against Sam and Emily's. All truth be told, it had taken me such a long time to stop measuring my own happiness against Sam and Emily. It didn't seem fair for me to then turn around and do it to Rachel, even if it was subconsciously.

Rachel would never be made happy by the same things that made Emily happy, and Paul didn't value the same things Sam did. The two of them might have been trying to fit themselves into the boxes Sam and Emily had created, but it wasn't working. Maybe Rachel's move to give up the pretense would help them both in the end. Believing that helped alleviate my fears.

"How are you so good at this?"

Embry had the nerve to look like he didn't know what I meant. He hummed questioningly, brow furrowed in a way that I found ridiculously endearing.

"Looking at things in ways that make them less intimidating and scary," I explained. "You do it all the goddamn time. I kind of hate you for it."

He smirked, leaning down to kiss me. After pulling away far too soon, he said, "Next time I'll let you work yourself up again."

I expected that to be the extent of the answer. There didn't seem to be a more serious one, but then Embry spoke again.

"But it's just the way we each view the world. You worry, Leah. It's what you do. You expect the bad things to happen, so you view everything through that lens. You're always complaining that I'm hopelessly optimistic, although I'd prefer 'realistic.' It doesn't mean I'm right more often than you, just that I approach it differently."

It was difficult to believe that. Embry had a way of talking about what he believed in with such confidence, and while that hadn't been enough to convince me at first, I was becoming unable to view in a different way. Maybe it was a sign that he was turning me into a more optimistic person, but it was easier to believe that he was right when I could see that he believed what he was saying.

Embry put more thought into everything he said than anyone else I had ever met. In the past, that had been annoying. Now I found it endearing, not that I'd ever admit that to anyone.

Yet it was such a tenuous confidence that I had developed towards life. One comment from Rachel had the power to start crumbling it away. I wasn't sure that anything but talking to Embry helped. One day, hopefully, I wouldn't need reassurance from him to believe that the world wasn't a terrible place.

"You think things will ever be calm?" I asked. "That we could go more than a couple of months without someone being upset about something or other?"

There had never been a time since I phased where I could have told you that everyone in the pack was happy. Someone was always upset about something, and while the sources of the unhappiness always varied, plenty of it had been serious. It felt like we, as a group, were destined to battle for happiness forever.

"Probably not," Embry said. There was amusement in his voice, and I looked up at him in confusion. That was nowhere near the answer I had been expecting. Embry ran his hand along my back as if he thought I needed to be comforted.

"That would be like a fairy tale too, wouldn't it? People are always unhappy."

"But you're supposed to be the optimistic one here." I poked him in the abdomen hard enough that it would have bruised a human but Embry batted my hand away as if it were an annoying fly.

"We've talked about this. I'm realistic, not optimistic. Happy things happen, but bad ones do too. All the time. I'm not singing 'Kumbaya' and going on about how we'll all learn to love each other one day. Shit is always going to happen, but the good news is that good stuff happens too."

He had this annoying grin on his face as he concluded his little speech, and I wanted to wipe it off his face. Even if his words were comforting.

"I knew you were an optimist," I said, pretending to scoff.

Unfortunately, Embry knew me too well, and the stupid grin stayed on his face as he laughed at me. I swore that I didn't know how I put up with him all the time. It was incredible what I would let him get away with. I would have vomited if anyone else attempted to say it to me. Yet, with Embry, it had a habit of giving me these sickeningly sweet butterflies and making me feel tingly all over. Who was I kidding, I still kind of wanted to barf.

Eventually, this level of besottedness would have to come to an end, and I would welcome it when it did. I could only handle being this level of 'cute' for so long. I'd never asked for this. I'd never asked for any of this.

"Okay. I get it," I relented. "We're doomed for a life of drama and tears and fighting and whatever the hell else life decides to throw at us, but we're also going to have laughter and good times and whatever the fuck else you want to throw in there."

"That's basically it."

"Basically," I echoed. Embry still looked far too amused.

"We can be happy more than we are sad," he said. I could tell from the strong tone of his voice that it was important to him that I believe that one sentiment if nothing else. "I think that saying about hardship making people stronger is true. Going through bad shit makes the good stuff feel even better."

I snorted. There was no way I was going to believe that shit. If I could live in a world where nothing bad ever happened, I would take it, and I would live out my life in happiness. I wouldn't miss a thing.

"You're full of shit." In the past, such a comment would have caused Embry to lose his confidence and begin looking unsure of himself. He had always taken my insults to heart in ways none of the other guys did. Now he just kept smiling at me. I wasn't sure when the intimidation had worn off, but it had. And along with that went every defense I had carefully constructed. Apparently, we'd both been doing a number on each other without realizing it.

"I'm right," he insisted. "You know I am. You just won't admit it."

He _was_ right, was the thing, but I was never going to admit it to him. I thought back to Sam and everything that had happened between us, the events that had led to the darkest period of my life. I'd decided a long time ago that I wouldn't change the fact it had happened, and maybe that was what Embry meant. I still would have saved myself from future heartbreak, but I couldn't bring myself to erase what was in the past.

Why was that? I supposed it had to be what Embry said: it helped me appreciate the present more than I would have without it.

Damn it. I hated when he was right.

I knew from his expression that he was aware that he had won, whether I wanted to admit it or not, but I refused to confirm that to him out loud. The obnoxiousness I would have to deal with would be too much.

Embry at any point in time was too much. Intoxicatingly, annoyingly, obnoxiously, and amazingly too much. I hated him. I really fucking hated him. With a passion. Quite possibly too much passion as the case would be. And I didn't think it was going to end anytime soon. I'd jumped into the deep end, and I had no choice but to keep swimming. There was no way out. I'd either drown, or I'd stay afloat, but the edge of the pool was too far away for getting out to be an option.

I'd accepted as much, and somehow, it was less scary than it had been over the months prior. Something about being with Embry was easy. I'd always, in some capacity, known it would be. Embry was easier to be with than anyone I had ever known, and that level of comfort only increased the longer I knew him and the more time I spent with him.

Finally, I was starting to see what he'd been seeing all along: there was potential with us. Potential for a disastrous breakup, yes, but also potential for something that lasted. It was difficult to believe that Embry could screw anything up in the end, and that faith in him was what soothed me, what made me forget about the fears I had held.

 **A/N: And that's it for this story. There is going to be a fourth one. I have it written, but it still needs to be edited. I don't know when I'll begin posting it. Even though I have a complete draft, I don't know what my summer is going to look like, so I don't know how quickly I'll be able to get it edited. The next one feels very different than the last three to me, but I hope you'll all like it when I do manage to post it!**


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